New Blog Feature: Fragrance Fridays

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One of our Blogging 101 class assignments this week was to create a recurring blog post feature. I already had one, What Went Well Wednesdays, but I think I’ll add another, consistent with my renewed interest in fragrance and perfume, and lifelong interest in flowers and gardening. So welcome to Fragrance Fridays! I will post stories with a common thread of fragrance, scent or perfume — but not necessarily the kind that comes in a bottle. Here’s my first, about the rare blossoming of a Titan Arum, also known as the “corpse flower” at the Denver Botanic Gardens: Thousands Stop To Smell A Flower (And Hope Not To Gag), as reported by The New York Times. It gets its common name from the usual reaction that its blossom smells like rotting meat.

Okay, not a pleasant smell — but how fascinating! And it is really interesting to read how differently various visitors perceived the smell of the flower. Some smelled rotting meat but others smelled stinky cheese, gym socks, etc. The purpose of the scent is to attract specific insects that will then carry its pollen away, which is why most plants have evolved to emit fragrance, although some seem to use fragrance to repel. LiveScience.com explains more at: Denver Stinky Corpse Flower Blooms.

Scentbird?

Scentbird?

One of the tags I follow is “Perfume”. I have always loved perfume and even saved up my money in eighth grade to buy my mother a small flacon of Chanel No. 5, her signature perfume. An early memory of mine is sitting on her bed watching her get ready to go out with my father, as she sat at a real dressing-table whose lid, when lifted, revealed a mirror and a deep compartment filled with mysterious bottles of fragrance, lotion and makeup. I am firmly convinced that scent and fragrance can help transport us to a different (better?) state of mind, as the sense of smell connects to the most primitive, unconscious parts of the human brain, the ones that process emotions and memories. Let’s use that power for good!  Serenity now!

Today, another blog featured a subscription service called “Scentbird.” I loved that name so much, I had to read more just to find out what it was. Turns out it is a service where you pay a monthly fee to receive a decanted sample of a different named fragrance each month. This has clearly been given a lot of thought; subscribers get a special container to hold their samples, which come in small glass vials. Very creative! I had heard of another subscription for beauty supply samples — “Birchbox” — but not for fragrance. Where do they get these great names, by the way?

Anyway, Scentbird also has a blog where contributors comment on various fragrances: Scentbird. And today’s post included a fragrance I just tried myself in a store and liked very much: Hermes Jour d’Hermes. The blog aptly describes it as taking its wearer into a beautiful garden — and you know how much we love gardens here at Serenity Now. It was very appealing, with its white florals, green notes, sweet pea, citrus and water notes. And yes, it made me feel more serene.

Next up for me to try: Hermes Jour d’Hermes Absolu, pictured above with my favorite roses!

jourdhermes-bottle

Not Creepy

Not Creepy

Russian Revolution in Color

Today’s Blogging 101 assignment: respond to a prompt. Today’s Daily Post prompt is a photo challenge: show us something creepy. Coincidentally, the most interesting thing I’ve read this morning was a post on Mashable about a Russian photographer, Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, who devised a process for creating full-color photographs in the early 1900s. He won a commission to travel throughout the czarist Russian empire, capturing its many peoples in photographs. They are stunning!  It is amazing how much more immediate and contemporaneous photos seem when they are in color. These long-vanished people look out at us from a century or more ago and they come alive.

I don’t like creepy things and since the purpose of this blog is for me to focus on the positive, I’ve chosen to adapt this prompt and share these photos which I find fascinating, not creepy.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Creepy.”

A SeaGlass Carousel

A SeaGlass Carousel

What wouldn’t I give to be able to be at the opening of Battery Park’s long-awaited SeaGlass Carousel! I love carousels but I prefer the more creative ones that aren’t limited to pastel-colored horses. This is just about the most imaginative carousel I’ve ever seen: New York’s New Carousel. They have done some lovely sound and light shows there, even before the carousel itself opens. Five dollars a ride? Sold! I’ll be there, next time I’m in New York.

 

Photo: Filip Wolak, http://www.timeout.com