Author: Old Herbaceous

Perfume Chat Room, March 17
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Perfume Chat Room, March 17

Welcome to the Friday Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, March 17 — Happy St. Patrick’s Day! As regulars here know, I love green fragrances, so my green of the day today was Tom Ford’s Vert d’Encens. It is one of a group of four “Vert” fragrances he released in 2016. The perfumer was Olivier Guillotin. I have decants of all four; my favorite has been Vert de Fleur, which has a hefty dose of galbanum. I wasn’t crazy about Vert d’Encens when I first tried in some years ago, but now that I have an actual decant and have sprayed it more liberally on my wrists, I quite like it. The incense accord is very detectable, and it lasts well, too, several hours. Per Fragrantica, it has notes of incense, pine resins and fir balsam, heliotrope and woods. It isn’t smoky at all, which I’m enjoying.

Green incense sticks
Green incense sticks; image by Philip Arthur Moore.

I decided to honor my Irish roots as well as my husband’s and make corned beef with cabbage for dinner tonight. However, I’ve adopted a more modern cooking technique — baking/roasting the meat and vegetables instead of boiling them. I look forward to seeing how they turn out! I’d rather be eating Irish soda bread slathered in Irish butter, but I’m trying to reign in my consumption of carbs after our two weeks eating everything in sight in Barcelona and Lisbon over two weeks!

Do you have anything fun going on for St. Patrick’s Day? Also, fyi, due to my travels and absence, we’ll be off-schedule with our Notes on Notes and Counterpoint posts this month. Stay tuned!

Perfume Chat Room, March 10
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Perfume Chat Room, March 10

Welcome to the Friday Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, March 10, and we are just back from Spain and Portugal, totally jet-lagged. But what a great trip we had! I’m going to have to take up running to burn off all the pounds I gained from so much good food.

I’m so pleased with another perfume find: Yvresse! A discontinued YSL fragrance originally created by Sophia Grosjman, it seems to have been discontinued some time ago. It is prohibitively expensive in the US, when it can even be found. I found mine in a tiny perfumery, at a very reasonable price.

Glasses of the sparkling wine that shall not be named.

Aficionados know that Yvresse was originally named Champagne, until French winemakers took legal action to prevent that name’s use. Have you ever tried Yvresse?

Perfume Chat Room, March 3
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Perfume Chat Room, March 3

Welcome to the Friday Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, March 3, and I am in Barcelona! Love this city. Yes, I have visited some perfumeries, most notably The Perfumery, a true haven for artisan and niche perfumes. I had a lovely visit with its owner, who now sees clients by appointment. And then you get his undivided attention and expertise, for at least an hour! It was great. I tried several brands that were entirely new to me, including the line developed by Fragrantica writer Miguel Matos.

I also visited Perfumeria Regia, also a lovely store but a more standard retail experience. I sampled a couple of brands I hadn’t seen before, but most of their stock, while excellent, is available in the US. I did come out with one discovery set, though!

We’ve had fun revisiting favorite places like Park Guell and seeing some new ones, like the interior of Casa Batllo. And we have eaten very, very well! Do you have any favorite Catalan or Spanish dishes?

Perfume Chat Room, February 24
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Perfume Chat Room, February 24

Welcome to the Friday Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday February 24, and I can’t believe we’re almost at the end of another month! If you didn’t get a chance to read it yet, please check out the most recent collaboration between me and Portia Turbo of Australian Perfume Junkies, a Counterpoint post about Chanel No. 5. We had a lot of fun with it!

Drumroll, please — I’ve committed to retiring as of August 31 this year! I’m very excited to move into the next phase and have more time to explore my many interests and enjoy my family and friends.

Any big news in your life this week?

Featured image by Portia Turbo, Australian Perfume Junkies.

Counterpoint: Chanel No. 5
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Counterpoint: Chanel No. 5

Welcome to a new feature that I hope will appear monthly! Portia Turbo of Australian Perfume Junkies and I had so much fun doing “Scent Semantics” with some other fragrance bloggers in 2022 that we decided to launch TWO regular features as a new collaboration in 2023. The first, which we plan to post on the first Monday of each month, is “Notes on Notes“, in which we choose one note and write about it however the spirit moves us; our first Note was oakmoss. This second feature is “Counterpoint“, in which we ask ourselves the same handful of questions about a single fragrance and post our separate thoughts on it, on the third Monday of each month. We’re still experimenting with format, so comments on that are welcome too! This month’s Counterpoint fragrance is Chanel No. 5.

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Perfume Chat Room, February 17
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Perfume Chat Room, February 17

Welcome to the Friday Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, February 17, and I hope you all had a pleasant week, including Valentine’s Day if you celebrated it and just a great week if you didn’t. I can now reveal that the Valentine’s gift I got for my dear husband is one for us to share — a large bottle of Parfums de Nicolai’s New York. Not New York Intense, though I’ve read that is also very good. I borrowed from his small bottle I had given him some years ago while we were out of town, and I really enjoyed it on me as well as him! So now we’ll share it. I suspect he will use more than I will, because I have so many other options, lol!

How’s this for serendipitous: I was trying to figure out what might be a fun Portuguese perfume to bring home from our upcoming trip, and one of you suggested I reach out to Miguel Matos to ask him, but meanwhile I found out that The Perfumery in Barcelona carries Miguel’s own line! And we’ll be in Barcelona before Portugal. So I’ll go try some of Miguel’s scents and see if there’s one I’d like to bring home as a souvenir of both Barcelona and Portugal.

Our weather here has careened from chilly and wet, to sunny and warm, back to freezing cold and wet today. It’s not literally freezing yet, but it’s barely above that level and will dip below 32 F tonight. Glad I got in some overdue garden cleanup yesterday, when I think it was in the 70s! Sadly, the many pink magnolias that had popped open this past week will undoubtedly brown up and lose their blossoms after tonight’s freeze. They’ve been beautiful while they lasted.

Photo collage of pink magnolia blossoms
Pink magnolia blossoms; image from allaboutgardening.com.

Next week will be Portia’s and my next “CounterPoint“, posting on Monday! We’ll be writing about our different experiences and versions of Chanel No. 5. Please join us!

What’s new in your world? I’ve been enjoying NST‘s community project this week, which was to match a fragrance with a textile or wear a fragrance that reminds you of a textile. So this week, I’ve worn Cristalle (textile-adjacent), Dior’s New Look 1947, and today — Grey Flannel, which I’m really enjoying.

Perfume Chat Room, February 10
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Perfume Chat Room, February 10

Welcome to the Friday Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, February 10, and next week is Valentine’s Day! It is traditionally a peak season for fragrance sales, since perfume is often considered a romantic gift. I may just put my new bottle of Mitsouko eau de toilette in a Valentine’s gift bag and re-give it to myself on behalf of my husband. We don’t often go out for Valentine’s Day, but we’ll probably make a special dinner at home and maybe share a nice bottle of cava or Prosecco. I won’t mention here what I’m giving him, as he sometimes reads this blog!

Meanwhile, the spring flowers have started popping out all over my neighborhood after recent balmy spells. Yellow daffodils abound, but also forsythia, and my beloved pink magnolias. I just hope their blossoms don’t get nipped by a late frost, which often happens. I must go for a walk around the neighborhood this weekend to enjoy and sniff them, I think their fragrance is just gorgeous. I’ve not yet found a perfume that matches it, though I’ve tried many, many “magnolia” fragrances. The pink ones that bloom in the spring have a lighter, more lemony scent than the heavier white flowers of the Southern evergreen magnolias; we have several of those in our back garden along one fence line, so I’m very familiar with their scent.

Photo by Deena on Pexels.com

Speaking of scent in the garden, our mahonias have been blooming for weeks now. They are the strangest plants — they look very forbidding, with their spiky, leathery leaves and weird forms like some kind of illustration by Dr. Seuss, but they smell like lilies of the valley, one of my favorite scents. Their fragrance tends to drift across the garden, emerging unexpectedly when one is occupied with various seasonal tasks like renewing mulch.

Leatherleaf mahonia plant in bloom
Leatherleaf Mahonia; image from Univ. of Tennessee Botanical Gardens

Do you have any big plans for Valentine’s Day, or a fragrance you’re hoping to receive? Has spring arrived where you live?

Notes on Notes: Vetiver
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Notes on Notes: Vetiver

Welcome to this month’s installment of “Notes on Notes”, a monthly collaboration between this blog and Australian Perfume Junkies! Every month, we pick one fragrance note and write about it, posting on the first Monday of the month — fragrances we like that feature it, what we like or don’t like about it, anything else we know about it, whatever takes our fancy. For February, the note is vetiver.

Notes on Notes logo
Notes on Notes; image by Portia Turbo.
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Perfume Chat Room, February 3
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Perfume Chat Room, February 3

Welcome to the Friday Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, February 3, and what a week it has been. On Monday, we buried my dear father-in-law: Rainy Days and Mondays. I appreciate the kind words from several of you! Flew back home late Monday night, had another day off on Tuesday to decompress, then back to work we all went on Wednesday. I’m so glad it’s Friday!

In fragrance-related news, I spent the weekend using my husband’s bottle of New York, by Patricia de Nicolai, because I forgot to bring any of my many decants and samples (my go-to travel options). New York was so interesting yet comforting, for hours at a time, that I used Amazon points to buy a large back-up bottle so DH and I can share it. Have I mentioned lately how much I love Amazon points? Some reputable retailers of fragrances like BeautyHabit have Amazon stores, and you can use your points there. So much for my low-buy resolutions — but I tell myself that using points isn’t really “buying”, lol.

In other, more cheerful news, we are planning a trip to Lisbon, Portugal this spring, with our son and his girlfriend. This will be AFTER our upcoming trip to Barcelona with our two daughters. A work trip for my husband, while daughters and I entertain ourselves all week. I’m making up for all the trips we weren’t able to take in 2020 and 2021.

I know many lovely perfume outlets in Barcelona but have never been to Lisbon. Suggestions, anyone? Please share in the comments! Also, don’t forget to check out new posts from me and Portia on Monday, when we’ll do our next “Notes on Notes“. The note in question will be vetiver. I hope you’ll chime in with your thoughts!

Winter lake
Rainy Days and Mondays
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Rainy Days and Mondays

I feel I should explain why there was no Perfume Chat Room post last Friday, as I try to make sure I set up that weekly space for community chit-chat. My father-in-law, whom I loved dearly, died last Monday and his funeral was yesterday. So yes, the last couple of Mondays have been sad ones.

But, as the Carpenters’ lyrics say,

Nice to know somebody loves me
Funny, but it seems that it’s the only thing to do
Run and find the one who loves me (the one who loves me)

My father-in-law knew how much he was loved, and my husband knows how much I loved his father. He always made me feel that I belonged, right from the start, although I was the first non-Catholic to marry into the family. My FIL, a decorated career military officer, was totally open and direct about his affection for people he loved — he proposed to my MIL on their first date, and he proposed to me on behalf of my then-boyfriend, now husband, the first night I met my future in-laws. He was a dear, dear man, who taught his sons also to be loving, kind men. And while we’re sad to lose him and will miss him, he was in his 90s and had lost his beloved wife of 60 years five years ago. He was clear of mind and loyal of heart until the very end, and he chose not to go back to the hospital when his heart issues worsened. He wanted to be reunited with his beloved, and had the faith that he would be.

It’s funny, because I don’t actually know whether my FIL ever wore Old Spice, but to me he was the quintessential “dad” who would have worn it. Old-fashioned in a nice way. Warm, cozy, and fatherly. Deceptively simple and straightforward, with hidden depths that weren’t demons — just more layers of warmth and sweetness, together with complexities. His funeral Mass was beautiful, and it included the traditional incense, which I found very comforting.

“Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. ”

— William Shakespeare

Pope Francis and statue of Virgin Mary, with incense
Pope Francis uses incense during Mass in Verano cemetery, Rome (CNS photo/Paul Haring)