Things seen (and an apology for that)

The kind of post that usually gets titled "under construction."

sometimes i think the real reason for the soap is that the layers of bubbles form a veil over the results of what is essentially a murder spree
regardless, if one is to save the flowers, the japanese beetles must be attended to
(not in the spirit of a lady-in-waiting)

I am going through a learning curve with Blogger's new interface, and you will see some layout changes here over the next week or two.  Have not yet entirely figured out how to land at "done" without you seeing some of the interim.

If only I could shake and stir some bubbles over it all...

My apologies.

image author's own

I do, I do, I do Heart Les Carrottes!

Love them.

Also it, the perfume Olivia Giacobetti created for Honore des Pres.

From the odd, bitter rooty vegetal opening, to the iris reveal, to the cozy drydown which sometimes reads as a fairly simply buttery iris, and occasional as a sort of mildly dense sweetened carrot souffle, the kind of thing you could serve either along with a meal or afterward for dessert.

In chatting with other folks about this one, I am noticing that a) a lot of people found it, well, odd, b) a few people looked askance at me when I called it an iris scent, especially a "buttery" iris one, and c) Vamp a NY is still getting a LOT of love.  Followed in second by I <3 Coco.

Fine.  Go hang with the big bombs, the dense chewy things.  I'm going to hang back here, keeping a low profile, but totally enjoying snarfling every stage of I ❤ Les Carrottes.


photo, as usual, the result of the author's mischief
Signature on carry out sleeve presumably that of Ms. Giacobetti, and a welcome surprise

And to think I saw it on my mulberry tree

Aren't they gorgeous?

In a slightly ramshackle, rough around the edges, are sure sure it's okay to eat this way?

Mulberries are too often maligned.  "They're messy," so many over the years have said.  "Birds eat them and, well, you know..." trail off others.  "They're not really that pretty."

Harumph.

In my former house, once my home, we shared mulberry trees along the property line.  TREES.  Not bushes.  Over 40 feet tall.  Probably over 50.  I know I don't exaggerate, because at the time we lived in an old three story house whose two main floors, above grade, had 10' ceilings, and the attic flew even higher in the center.  I estimate conservatively because people would visit, people who had even seen mulberry *trees,* and they would comment on the beautiful large trees and how special they were and what kind were they, anyway?  And it was often hard to convince them that they were mulberries.  Unless, of course, it was a certain time of year.

With a tree like that, one person's "messy" is another person's "thank goodness, because we would never reach those berries any other way."

In the current house, which is my home, the tree is not majestic.  Nor is it a shrub.  It is a something that probably was a shrubby tree a few years before we moved in, but now is a non-central trunk tree.  Young, but tree.  Some judicious pruning might make it more architecturally attractive, but it does not set roots from my property, so I cannot make that decision.  Besides, in its tenacious shrubby somebody forgot about it even through the construction of the house on the land that was once a farm behind us means that maybe it carries the mojo of survival.

I thank it for that.  For the shade it brings to that corner, for doing its part to break up a vista that would be, well...a nearly blank wall.  For feeding the birds.  Yes, the birds.  Birds love mulberries, it is true.  In fact, they are recommended as a companion crop for someone trying to raise fruit trees.  I think it works.

Check it.

Mulberries and cherries living together.
Hands reaching hands.

I tell you, we get plenty of cherries.

So, yeah, birds eat them.  Thank goodness.






Yes.  They are messy underfoot.  Yes, there is an odd fermenting smell for a couple of weeks while they macerate on your path or in your lawn.  Yes, that juice is INTENSE in color and will stain just about anything it touches.

(Those beautiful bearded iris, the purple grape smelling ones?  They stain, too.)

Life is an exchange.  I like this deal.

I've seen trees torn down because people didn't like the "mess"--cottonwood, mulberry, serviceberry, maple, what have you.  It doesn't really matter; a lot of trees are "messy" at some point in the year.  The ones that are bred not to be generally end up decidedly unhardy, and certainly not productive.

Okay, fine.  I'll rephrase the question.  Aren't these mulberries a gorgeous hot mess?


By the way, mulberries are the one natural food for a silkworm.

Let you think I am reaching too hard to make a silk purse out of a...well, a mulberry mess.



Random things mulberry:


I found a recipe for mulberry-rhubarb shortcake that I'd like to try.  Extended cool and rain (except when it has been extraordinarily muggy and hot) means I've still got harvestable rhubarb when the mulberries are ready.  Hunh.   


Project Mulberry is a book, for children, by Linda Sue Park.  Target audience is younger than her book My Name is Keoko.  In it, a mulberry tree ends up being the means to draw a diverse group of characters together.  Science fair, silkworms, stereotypes both external and internalized.  And the use of the term "snot brain," which disturbs some.  (See Amazon reader reviews.)  ((Thought I'd go for Theodor Geisel, didn't you?  Nah.  But you should.  ;) ))


Mulberry perfume?  Couldn't think of one off the top of my head.  Found a 2011 release of Lily by Koto Perfumes, but the "mulberry" in it is "mulberry leaf."  Going to go back out and investigate...and I'm back.  Leaf torn, crushed.  It's...well, leafy green, actually much like a lettuce.  But, unique?  Like, say, tomato leaf?  Not particularly.  Hmm.  


And then there is this.  Set your tea cup down.  Pon Farr.
Get your groove on with Uhura and Spock, and settle into base notes of sandalwood, peach and mulberry.  I should have known.  That's what I get for urging open-mindedness with trees.  Karma, returned in perfume form.

all images author's own, obtained without stainage...i think

In flagrante indelicato: Lilacs, a.k.a. the fallacy of sensitive tosh

Lilacs.  Some of you are already well past your season, others can still smell the peak in your nose, even if the actual peak was already days ago.

Here, we're a couple of weeks past the peak of the old-fashioneds, and while Miss Kim is still pumping out a honking snootful of scent today, I have a feeling that this is like when a singer pushes out the last air from the bottom of the diaphragm.  It's big, it's blowsy, but it is no longer fresh, and a little hollow at the heart.

Old fashioned lilac, pumping out the volume 2011

Since Miss Kim is pumping out her final glory, I found myself out gathering armfuls of blooms for the second time this season this morning.  This is a big milestone for me; in the first place, I am conservative when it comes to harvesting blooms.  Not just because I have a sensitive side that feels bad about cutting them, but because I love seeing them in their environment.  I plant with an eye toward how the "composition" looks in situ; in movie terms, it's a botanical mise en scene.  Heck, I'll even spend time deciding if I let a weed have a few days as part of the composition, if texture/color/height fill in the scene nicely and it won't go all Godzilla and take over the area.

But there is a saying about lilacs, which is true:  They like the lopping.  Which is to say, trimming encourages fresh wood (and therefore fresh blooms), keeps the plant looking fully and less "leggy," and also helps manage height/width if that at all matters.  It's not that "they're asking for it"--that saying has always bothered me for a number of reasons--but they do respond well to it.  And, in fact, they thrive as a result.

Furthermore, lilacs stems headed for the vase need a little, well, abuse.  Smashing.  A simple end cut will not allow the woody stems to take up adequate water, and they'll wilt within 24 hours.  Sometimes you can almost watch the depressing withering as if time lapse was accelerated in front of your real time eyes.  I conveniently forgot that with the first round of trimmings.  They were droopy by nightfall.  This time I did not make that error.

My tool of choice was a railroad stake.  Plenty of heft, and the head end provides a pseudo-cutting edge, so that in one fell strike you can smash-slash.  2-3" of gashes up from the bottom of each, and you are good to go.

It's not that they ask for it.  But if you are going to do the trimming, and want them to hang out for a while in the vase, you do need to alter them.  With violent measures.  Because you need to expose cells, and soften tenacious structured material.

This, my friends, is the "wan" lilac.

It is a deceptive shrub.  That fragrance that is so "pretty," that visits but once a year, can actually nearly strangle you.  Our Miss Kim, for example, is right outside a lower floor bathroom window.  Which in some ways was good planning by the previous owner.  Because it offers a lovely screen 3 out of 4 seasons of the year, and is often snow covered enough for privacy effect in the fourth.  Because it is visually attractive.  And because in other areas of the house, and on the back patio, catching a waft can be a pleasant thing.

But if you are in that front bathroom?  On a hot day?  This is a situation the word "cloying" serves well.  Some might even say "suffocating."

This is a clear example of when "fresh air" is not the same as "air heavy with the fragrance of {lilac/fill in your own big stonkin' flower}."

**

So when the topic of En Passant comes up, I am always careful to thank Olivia Giacobetti.  She knew that the best way to experience a lilac was in passing, not in situ.  Certainly not stuck in nostrilo.  And too much of a good thing is, well, too much, so there's that cucumber and that bread and that ghost of Apres L'Ondee.

It's perfect.  As if it were my neighbor growing the lilacs, baking the bread, me slicing the cucumber, me discovering I still had remnants of yesterday's Apres L'Ondee somewhere on me.  (Alas, that that could actually happen in real life...)

I can't wear En Passant when the lilacs are at peak, incidentally.  Too much input.  I am too busy processing and managing the heavy full-throated single relentless note of the lilacs.  Which must be some kind of siren song, come to think of it; all of this noise, and still I gather it into bundles and bring it into my house.

My favorite times to wear En Passant are early spring, when it seems (as it so often does) that it is having trouble revving up, and in the fall, for a kind of nostalgia.  Plus the occasional nostalgic occasion or mood throughout the year.

There are times when the hologram, the reproduction, is just the thing.

*
Hundreds of tiny trumpets on my countertops and carpeting my floor in the area I put the stems into a vase.  Because, yes, despite the volume on the olfactory noise, these flowers have peaked, and every handling shakes loose some of the florets.  But they needed to be gathered.

You smash them, they last longer.

They disintegrate, but shall return.

They aren't delicate.  And they aren't dead.

You conveniently tend to forget how they are capable of choking you.

As it turns out, it may be that longer term relationships with them are best conducted via stand-ins.

So pretty, they are.


image of old-fashioned lilac, author's own
V.S. Naipaul's opinions, his own
Olivia Giacobetti's genius, her own

Things that smelled, May 2011

For me, the Smelly Month of May started with daffodils.  And rain, and dirt, and crabapple blossoms.

Then came a road trip.  The smell of the air on the Taconic parkway, detergent and stale water in a car wash.

 Alliums, with the one revealing itself to be a maturing morpher.  Starts out vaguely ozonic, hint of vegetation decay with a whiff of onion.  Turns into intoxicating sweetness.

And then, there are the deep purple ones, which have a hint of grape.  Fake grape.  But not at all fake.  Very huffable.

 

Homecoming.  More dirt.  Hyacinths.  Tulips.  Winter onions pulled and spring onions planted.

 Oh, yes, you potent permeating thing.  Viburnum carlesii, you reek.  In a knock you over with white flowers of the northern latitudes way.

Tartarian honeysuckle, which like certain perfumes (remember my time with Apercu?), registers best from a distance.  A new potted rose for planting, with full blooms while those in the ground are still working on shoots.  

Lilacs, and more rain.  

Just rain, rain + pavement + traffic, rain + fake car air.  Rain in freshly cut grass.  Rain, just rain.

 Rhubarb.  Sweet alyssum for tucking her and there.  Sweet woodruff, late for May Wine on May Day but welcome always.

Scented geranium starts.

Always dirt.

Always something new.

And, of course, the irises.  Irises come, like pallida and some of the german bearded.  Smells of sharp lemon and soft sweet lemon chiffon and an impossibly lilting sweet grape.

I have not been with words much in May.  I have been some with perfumes.

But I have been much, much with smells.

I hope you had a good month.  See you in June.


all images author's own

The Smell of Fury: Mr. McGregor's Revenge

Among other places I've been lately is my own backyard.  Where I do attempt to garden.  Things intervene at times -- Mother Nature, life.  I generally roll with it.  One of my tenets for gardening is I only want to fuss if I feel like it.  Otherwise, the joint should be able to largely run on its own.  (I give it roots to grow, it needs to use its leaves to fly, so to speak.)

All is very Zen.  Weeds come, they get pulled.  Probably.  Edges are maintained, but not religiously.  Experiments in cohabitation (will it be okay if I grow this iris in the asparagus bed?) are made.  Harvests are assumed to be about 1/3 of potential, given the fact I like to maintain things wildlife-friendly.  Why 1/3?  Calculate 1/3 loss to wildlife, 1/3 potential loss to whatever, leaves 1/3 for us humans.  This sets the bar at a level that leads to minimal disappointment and maximum happy surprises.

Unless this happens.

Decapitation by rabbit.

In which case, The Peaceable Kingdom gets all rumbly.  The young me who cringed whenever Mr. McGregor menaced Peter Rabbit needs to go in a closet and hide, because the old and wizened me starts looking around for a hoe.

And I don't mean to start weeding.

Until I started growing vegetables, I never felt this kind of id-like response when dealing with things dirt.  I've seen hostas munched down to nibs, and merely shrugged, knowing they'd be back the next year.  But when it came to produce...tasty, fresh, labored, contemplated, organic, so fully imagined I drooled fruit of my labors, fruit whose cost came partially out of the family grocery budget...well...

...like a pea, I snapped.

The first year, I took to letting the dog out and encouraging him to go chase the leaping lepus.  I had to rethink that strategy when he was, erm, VERY enthusiastic about discovering a bunny den.  With babes.  (Turn away.  It gets worse.  I won't discuss, but yes, I had to practice "ethical" euthanasia.)  So I turned to prevention, which of course would have been best to practice from the very beginning.  I've tried hair, pet and human, red pepper spray, row covers.  Hair works erratically, and then only until it rains.  Red pepper spray works, unless it entices, and in either case, only until it rains.  Row covers work, until it gets hot, and then they need to come off.

And I don't like the way they look.  I like looking at greenery in my garden, not gauze.

So, it's a hodgepodge of prevention and acceptance around here.  With the occasional bout of mind-noise anger.

I inadvertently brought this topic up with some 'fume friends.  And, because I had sympathetic ears -- none of which quivered or were floppy -- who inspired me toward a particular slant.  A scented slant.  A proposal for Christopher Brosius.  To wit:

The Smell of Fury:  Mr. McGregor's Revenge

The title came to me in a flash.  But it took a little time--and some painful honesty--to compose a proposal/inquiry.

TO:  Christopher Brosius
FROM:  A Passionate Gardener, an Avid Scent Wearer
RE:  Brief for a New Project


CB, you're one to tackle this one.  It doesn't tell a story so much as take you down of (garden) path of personal development, vegetable patch style.


The story:  Discovery, Delirium, Reconcilement
The backstory:  Innocence lost, Peter Rabbit
The smells:  AT FIRST dirt, fresh air, other vegetation--for this writer, a rub of sage, a hint of garlic chive, the sharp medicine of creeping charlie, the ozonic yet odd decay of an allium flower, the hint of a leather glove, rubber and feet (hello, best garden clog ever).  A HARSH SMACK of tomato leaf which leads to a SHARP TRANSITION as the smell of metal glints invitingly in your nose.  Other writers might propose a hint of gunpowder at this point, but I'm thinking fur and the brush of pine and sweat and the smell of a blister forming as a runner tries to gain on a rabbit while wearing rubber clogs.  A SWIRL again of transition as you briefly but disturbingly ...oh, dear, it is so harsh to say...but you are bold, and you will go where I can't...it is only imagined, but my visual will become your fur plus blood, I think.  So QUICKLY a waft of the fresh breeze only hinted at in the allium now writ complete and non-compromised, green and ozonic all at once, leading to flowers and the crisp smells of green beans and peas and the oddly sharp (gee, is there a connection to the blood here?) smell of a properly ripened but not mushy tomato.  Perhaps a lovely balsamic vinagrette?


Fava beans, your call.  I say it is over the top.  But I have a friend who wants the whole denouement to be rabbit stew.  


Can we talk?




I dunno.  It's a start.  And certainly a catharsis.


I'm more demonic in my head than I ever am when it comes to real life.  In real life, I bought more tomato plants than I had space for.  Already, I'm mourning that I did not think to put Pink Lady, that modern faded something, in the ground first, for then I would be swapping it out for the robust vintage Mortgage Lifter.  But I tend to think positive (oh, hush), so was hoping I would just be offering up the extra plants to a neighbor.


So I brush the dog -- who has fur, I know, and does not offer any sebum-ish moments as I groom him.  I let him roam.  I make homemade non-toxic but hopefully highly repellant sprays.  


But mostly, I putter where I am inclined, let the rest go, and hope for the best.


Maybe one day, I'll be sneaking huffs of a new scent I'm testing, shorthanded as McGregor's Fury amongst perfume folk.  Wait, no--better yet--I'll be a pre-release tester.  You know.


{Beat)


So that this cosmetic can be identified as not having harmed rabbits in testing.

photo of decapitated tomato plant, (sadly) author's own

"stop animal testing" image found on various websites, including Amy's Gripping Commentary

Blue (a musing)

WARNING:  No perfume today.  Follow the bouncing ball.  A sketch from a sketchy brain.


jeans  sky  mood  moon  sea  lake  yonder  flu  Monday  language  humor  cheese

There we go.  Cheese.

Had to take a while to get to food.  Something food.  That's edible.  Even if that's mold I'm consuming.


"So in conclusion, {cough, look down at notes} my subjects were more willing to eat the food with the green dye than any other alteration {raise hand to point at bar graph}, and the blue food {brief pause, smile that might be a smirk flashes across face} was the least chosen."


Science fairs.  Ever been to one?  A sea of tri-fold upright poster boards, visible schisms between parent aided and student dependent projects, kids giving their spiel to visitors, kids bored out of their minds, kids totally distracted by their projects.

Next to talking to plants to see if they will respond to kindness (or, alternately, music), one of the most frequent themes and variations I have seen is playing with your food.  Specifically, messing with the color of it to see if one's subjects can be grossed out influenced in terms of preference.


"BLUE: the absolute worst.  I had blueberries all day.  And Gatorade.  Dinner was this gross blue ice cream I saw at Baskin Robbins.  This was so, so gross.  Most people tell me they started to worry because they were feeling sick just looking at the photos.  Blueberries aside, there is nothing blue that isn't synthetic.  And don't try to argue with me here.  There are 30 people that each said 'let me think, I know I can think of something blue for you to eat' and I would respond with 'no, really, you can't.' [...] I hated blue day.

"Diet Sunglasses" available at Yumetai
wear them to reduce your appetite

These words from Johanna's TokyoHanna blog.  Johanna's mind (and blog) wanders a lot of places; a girl after my own heart.   She undertook a week of monochromatic eating, which is, of course, the polar opposite of eating across the rainbow.  Nonetheless, there she was, and on the last day she was sticking with BLUE, not purple, because photography was an important element of her diary project, and the foods had to register as true blue.

Johanna was unhappy with the fact that there are not many "blue foods" to choose from in the first place.  (Fortunately for us rainbow thinking eaters, we can also find other foods fertile with flavenoids, such as cabbage, kale, spinach, asparagus, lima bean, garden peas...even onions.)

Hey, while we're here in blue food, have you ever come across that helpful diet "tip" that occasionally appears in women's magazines?  The one that says  when trying to lose weight, blue food and blue plates are your friend?  Of course, they were thinking more about our predisposition to avoid blue when it comes to food, not to the paucity of purpleness in food.  They're back at the science fair.


"Try this," he said, plonking a potato shaped object onto my plate.  "Go ahead; guess what that is."  My eight year old self searched her developing brain.  "A potato?," I ventured.  He looked a little disappointed.  "Wait; don't guess yet.  Taste it."  So I did.  "A potato?" I suggested again, this time more boldly.  This time, he was pleased and disappointed.  "Well...yes.  But don't you find it kind of mealy?"


Conversations with my grandfather often veered off into unpredictable directions, often just as much because we didn't talk all that often as the strange tacks they could take.  But produce was generally predictable.  And a topic of discussion every year we were both alive and capable of conversing.  He grew all his vegetables in his garden.  He was a man of patterns.  He would plant 4/5 of the garden with known favorites, and experiment in the rest.  My eighth summer was the first he first grew blue potatoes.  They became a kind of in joke between us, the innovation that wasn't an innovation--he had researched; turns out some scientist in a lab hadn't created the potato, they were an honest genetic strain--but a novelty item.  Because when it came down to brass tacks, they weren't the best potato, or even a good potato; they were just the purplest.

But he amused himself with them.  Many years later, when his granddaughter started her first garden, there was no doubt what kind of potatoes she would grow.

And when she had trouble with the novelty item that was supposed to be "perfect for growing potatoes," but most certainly was not, she avoided getting purple in the face but managed to let loose with some blue language she learned from her gardener grandpa.



No matter / How you slice it / It's still your face / Be humane / Use / Burma-Shave


I have enjoyed the sensory writings of Michelle Krell Kydd for a few years now.  Over at Glass Petal Smoke, she has written some beautiful pieces on things that smell and what smell does to us and for us.  Hers was one of those blogs where postings were infrequent, but almost always gems.  Then things slowed way down in 2010, and I wondered if we blogosphere attendees were losing her to other projects.

The worm turned.

She started a Twitter feed.  I followed.  And suddenly a mass of tweets about blue potatoes, an Oxo™ ricer, and an upcoming pie recipe.  While the onslaught of Burma shave like tweets was a little onerous, the promise of something insightful or beautiful or maybe both regarding blue potatoes kept me in the game.

Finally came the recipe.  And the pictures.  And my first two thoughts were, I know what the science fair kids would say.  And boy, is that purple.  (See post here.)  The flavenoid involved is apparently anthocyanin; while the Wikipedia article linked within the post explains that the "cyanin" part comes from the Greek for "blue," but you know that I am leaping across the Greek root and landing on another "cyan" word.  Yup, just like those smarty pants kids would.  Smirk.

Incidentally, some of those smarty pants kids would be telling me that if food is so good for you, why are there cherry pits and almonds, hmmm?  Because that's where cyanide comes from, you know, Teach.  Inevitable diversions into botanicals (digitalis, anyone?) and or misleading labeling (the mistake of equating "all natural" with "healthy for you," for example).

NONE of which is to suggest that the sweet potato pie recipe, which happens to be purple, and uses specific proprietary natural foods ingredients, is poisonous.  I'm just laying bare the easy associations my particular brain takes when the purple potato path is opened.  Also, perhaps, as additional warning that my brain can wander, even while focused.  As in...

The pie recipe calls for muscovado sugar.  Muscovado sugar is different from other raw sugars, like say demerara, because instead of being process via centrifuge and then having molasses re-added, it is allowed to dry in the sun.  Now, you combine "dry in the sun" and "musco-" and in the background, my brain is already seeing grapes in the sun and smelling a muscat. In the foreground is the question "why not call for a specific muscovado, but go ahead and specify a particular company's prepared Graham Cracker crust?"  I am disappointed to discover that my answer is related to the noise I find in Ebert's Amazon tweets.  But hey, I could be wrong.  And even if I was right, we all have the right to monetize as we see fit.

I miss the old posts, though, the ones that seemed to come from various paths of the heart and mind but didn't go down a highway in South Dakota toward Wall Drug.

In the interest of Science Fairs and fairness, I should point out that the pie is purple.  Not blue.  And I haven't made it or tasted it.  Not so sure how rosy the outlook is on me actually doing so.


My grandfather met my grandmother in South Dakota.  The purveyor of the blue potatoes and nearly every other thing he planted in his garden and yard used to be based in Yankton, South Dakota.  Cary Grant once dangled from the face of Mount Rushmore in a movie, and in the same movie, is menaced by a crop duster.  The Badlands wasn't just a movie, it's a heckuva place.  I kinda feel for Cary Grant.  Being lost in the Badlands would be awful.  Would I rather have a purple potato, or one from Idaho, if I were lost in the Badlands?  Can you stick two electrodes in a potato and power a compass?  


I miss my grandfather.  I miss my garden.  But the snow is melting, and I know I'll be turning over the soil in a couple of months.  This is the year I plan to introduce potato hills into the garden, something I haven't had since moving to the new house.  I'm looking through the catalogues, trying to find the right combination of options I know will do well in my climate, and a little something to experiment with.

I like experimenting.  I like it in my own life, in measure, and finding it in other places.  I like seeing the excited kids at the science fair, the ones who were able to find a topic they cared about, whose boards are maybe not beautiful, but whose minds are.  I like a person who says "why not?" to purple pie, and sets about making some.  Like most people, I have things I like, and things I don't like.


I know a compass uses a magnetic and not electrical current.  But my mind goes places.  Into the wild blue yonder and back again.  And again.  And again.

 






The Straight Dope on cheese, specifically blue cheese.


Pleasures of being diverted:  I found a recipe for Jack Daniel's Orange Zest butter.  Kid you not.  Though I suppose if ever we wanted to avoid the "appetite stimulating" spectrum of color, it would be when encountering butterfat.  Ah, well.  Maybe I'll pour a shot of JD and bake some blue potatoes tonight, all as a sort of half-baked homage to making the butter and the pie.  


Flavenoid food lists:  Care2, BBC


Bill Mitchell's Poynter Online article about Ebert's tweets, which Ebert tweeted a link to saying it supported his enterprise, but which I would qualify by saying it supports the action in that he is in the clear for doing so because he writes his own [advertising] copy, and is wiser to do his own rather than use a service such as Sponsored Tweets.  Which then becomes another numbers game, and a search for begetting followers as revenue stream rather than listeners ensues.  Folks who toil in online content and need to pay for shelter and food are, of course, interested in revenue streams, sooner or later.  


blue diet sunglasses found at Inventor Spot
cyanide bottle image at Firefighter's With Parkison's Disease
Deliciously Different Purple Viking potato image is my own, from the Gurney's catalog

Peonies, aka flowers that morph in the garden (plus one that morphs out of the bottle)

The past few days, the house has been redolent of floral soap, aka peonies.

I don't mind one bit.


The yard is full of blooms.  I am breathing a sigh of relief.  After a few years of nursing divisions of still not quite established plants from the old school, which had been transplanted from the old house, plants which had been either dug up by my grandfather from his yard, or by me from an about to be razed yard across the alley, their journey seems to have found a resting point.  With thanks probably due to an unusually drawn out spring--this week, we once again find ourselves with rain and cool temps, after a couple of rounds of very hot and humid--peonies are blooming in succession in various spots in the yard.  Shade and different varieties have meant that this is the third week with buds opening into blooms.

Stretching out the experience is a gardener's sleight of hand.  In succession gardening, you choose and arrange plants according to their known bloom times, so that there is always a flush of color somewhere. You can make this happen in one bed, or move the openings across space.  (In my yard, I have planted bulbs and perennials so that the first open farther away from the house, and then move closer, but as the growing season closes, that last hurrah bulbs are again moving away.)  You can also play with the boundaries of where a plant will survive, as with the peonies.  Peonies will tolerate a range of sun and shade as it is, so they are a natural for placing here and there to extend bloom time.

The fact that mine have a personal history helps motivate the desire to keep them around, in the yard and as cuttings in the house, as long as possible.  The fact that I care enough about them to want them survive no matter what means that there are homes throughout the greater metro area that now have these plants growing in their own yards.  I let go of a little piece of me in both transitions...but there have been rewards in that difficult process.  Such as knowing that even if I mess up, my grandfather's peonies have a greater chance of surviving in the world.

When peonies buds first start swelling, you get a hint of what they are going to look like, color-wise.  But there could be surprises inside...flames of other color, or splotches, or outright shares, or central stamens that contrast.  Plus, the flower could be one of those double filled ones, or a single cup, or "standard."  Getting to this stage takes 2-3 years from the time of division/planting a young specimen.

Getting a plant full of them takes another year or two.

I have to admit that I have a preference for the stipey buds, the ones that echo the flame tulip.  Yup, the flame tulip that cause such a stir back in the 16th century that people did the equivalent of taking out a mortgage in order to buy a few bulbs. Bulbs which were so highly valued because of the unusual striping on the petals.  Markings, aka "color breakings," which, it turns out, were caused by a virus.

Remember...development happens.  What you see here might not clearly indicate what happens next.

No flames on the open flowers, but contrasting yellow stamens.

Waiting, nurturing without obvious result, letting go in order to secure survival...difficult.  But such rewarding potential outcome...

This is but part of the reason why the smell of a peony in bloom will always be a striation of simplicity and history.  Sure, it's a soapy floral.

But what it took to get there...and the various forms it can take in delivery vehicle...


***

There are perfumes, of course, which morph as much as that red & white striped peony bud.

And which smell as simply soapy floral as the blossom.

When it comes to perfume, I'd rather wear the morpher.  I still can't get No. 5, my uber-soapy floral, to a "brings happiness" place.  I have my sensors up, waiting for an opportunity to try Patou 1000, which has brought happiness to Abigail, whose opinion I like to pay attention to. But I fear that my generation might sentence me to forever getting "soap" out of aldehydic florals...and something perhaps related to the fact I am uncomfortable wearing turtlenecks leading to me getting "smothering" out of an outright floral without lift.

So, I tend to search among the morphers and the unusually juxtaposed to get my floral happy place.  Andy Tauer's Une Rose Chypree, for example, which puckers your nose ever so slightly in the opening by letting the vegetal greenness of geranium and the sparkle of a hint of citrus go through a little sparring demo and then you start to realize the whole thing was choreographed, and the choreographer steps and a lo and behold it's rose, but the show is of course not focused on the choreographer.  Later, on me, the whole thing becomes and ambery wonder, to the point where I have forgotten what I sprayed that turned into that.  So maybe that's cheating, because the "floral" idea suggested by having a flower in the name never really turns out to be a straight up floral...but I did warn you that I'm not a fan of the straight up flower when it comes to perfume.

But wait, you say...what of the peony?  Can you stick to your thought train a little more closely and discuss not just the idea of flowers, or a flower which is not a peony, but maybe an actual peony scent?

And the honest answer is, not really.  I haven't tried much perfume which features peony.  Not the Stella in Two, not the Angel flanker, not any of Yardley or Crabtree and Evelyn or such.  Okay, I probably sniffed something in my dark ages before perfume, and that buried memory could well be contributing to why I am not inclined to do so today.  Maybe some day, the interest of scholarship.  If I did, I would start with the Yves Rocher Pivoine, because YR has provided some pleasant perfume surprises, and has that amber which I think is a fab bargain in terms of quality for price, plus I keep on seeing positive comments in comments on the interwebs.

BTW, I tend to get chided for touting the Voile d'Ambre, because I'm revealing some sort of secret, but hey, that's in production.  It's not like I'm directing you to an auction for a d/c scent that I'm in the midst of bidding on.  Plus, it's summer, and you'll think, oh, yeah, I should try that, but later, when it gets colder...and then you'll forget...and then it will still be a scent they mass produce for me, just me...  ;)

Have a great weekend.  Walk a garden.  Bring some blooms inside.  Maybe put one on.

**

Andy Tauer's own words on Une Rose Chypree, from his blog (which is, incidentally, an interesting read if you have by some odd chance not been there yet; he discusses his process as he goes about creating scents, as well as business, and other odds and ends as it suits him):

“Une rose chyprée” is an oriental rose on a chypre base. It is an elegant perfume built around two natural extracts from rosa damascena, absolute and the steam distilled essential oil.
Its heart is lifted by spices (Bay and cinnamon) and a fresh accord built around bergamot, lemon and clementine. Green Bourbon geranium oil lets the rose petals shine and contrasts with the dark resinous accord in the base, built around labdanum, oakmoss, patchouli, vetiver and vanilla.

*

all images are mine

the Une Rose Chypree juice I respond to comes from a Tauer-bottled sample, won via a blog contest, and I hope to replace it with more soon

all opinions expressed herein are solely those of the nom de plumed writer known as ScentScelf, which should be patently apparent given that not only is this a blog authored by ScentScelf, but these opinions are often imperfectly expressed and kind of twisted, so who would I take them from?  for that matter, who'd want 'em?   I'm feeling silly today, and am noting it here, for your amusement as well as mine if you've bothered to read this much fine print

speaking of fine print, agate is a stone, not just a type size, and you can find them in Lake Superior, along with, of course, the Edmund Fitzgerald.  now, if you've read THIS far, type "Gordon Lightfoot" in the comments, and you can get a sample of one of two florals I do enjoy:  Bulgari Rose Essentiale, DK Gold, or one I don't, Guerlain Mahora.  phew!  let's see if anybody's paying attention...