Saturday, September 19, 2009

the slowest infused etoh in history

Imagine my surprise when I scored a Jasminum sambac at Home Despot earlier this summer. I mean, we have a conducive climate in CA and all that, but this flower is the stuff of fantasy and is an atlas missile in any perfumer's arsenal, given its qualities as a crack-filler-inner, a crappy-blend-corrector, and certain something that works wonders in 'masculine' blends. It was like winning the lottery and it was also Christmas morning, at the same time :)

The plant is slowly growing and thriving, being a plucky little guy. I repotted him into a much larger vessel, into some hand-blended planting mix comprised of clay from the side yard where I excavated something like 50 square feet of clay (and then filled in with a measly 20 square feet of purchased planting mix, gah), wood shavings and shredded straw from the chicken coop/run, and then fresh-ish compost. He's throwing lots of blooms at a time now.

And of course, those blooms are getting plopped into etoh, and ending their days of freshness happily inebriated, soaking until they get crunchy, and I replace them with fresh blooms. It looked futile at first. 100ml of etoh, and two blooms. Three blooms a few days later. But, one keeps at this sort of thing, and over three months one gets a reward, or at least the preview to a reward.

(Still kicking myself for not bugging the Despoteers to order more plants for me in June.)

No clue what I'll be using this precioussssss for, when it's 'done', or when the plant decides he has given me enough flowers. It was a reflex getting into the habit in the first place, and I figured at the time that I'd better just do it or regret not having done it when I finally have time to start blending again.

Sometimes life feels like a marathon of stages of prep work, eh.

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