Can your skin stop a perfume?

I stop watches. Always have.  They are on me for sometimes a week, sometimes a year, but they will stop.  I can leave them sit for a while and shake them, then put them back on, but they will stop within a day after that. Once the watch is given to someone else, they will run for years on them.  I’ve heard it is because I am magnetic, too much iron, something. My brother stops watches too.  Neither of us can wear those little magnet things that are supposed to help with your joints and arthritis. I put those on and just turn hot and burn up.  I wear this great big kinetic men’s watch now — it is heavy and clunky, but it runs like a champ.  I like the pretty little women’s watches, but I can’t wear them.  This is how I feel about Guerlain. I love them all, but I can’t wear them, and it makes me sad because I think they are so beautiful, but once they get on my skin, they are just too potent and overpowering, like the magnets or iron I have has turned them harsh and not elegant, just too strong and powdery, like my skin just stops it. But I will always love them.

L’Artisan Tout Simplement —  I’m kinda surprised no one is loving this so much. It goes on tart and green and not at all sweet on me.  Now it’s true that it disappears fairly quickly, but it’s
a great summer scent and it does come in the great big bottle, so spritzing with abandon in your hair and all over is a great thing to do and should help keep the scent alive! It is a little linear and not complex for as long as it does last, but crisp and refreshing nevertheless. I normally get along with almost all of the L’Artisans pretty nicely, so I was pretty sure I would at least like this one if not love it. Given that I don’t want my perfumes hanging around in summer, this seems pretty perfect to me, the way Osmanthe Yunnan is perfect for summer.  Notes of green mandarin, ginger, yellow mandarin, frangipani, red mandarin, and white cedar. I get all the goody of this on my skin, it smells like the best of an orange peel with a little zest thrown in and just a dash of wood to make it interesting.

Trapp candles —  It seems I am always hunting for the perfect candle. I used to have all Trapp candles, but they only had a handful of scents back 10 years ago or so, and I grew bored and got lost in Yankee Candles for years, which I don’t like as well as far as smells and throw, but my tries of some of the really high-end candles at $50 a pop made my wallet cry, so the price point of the Yankees made it a better choice. I love the Votivo too, though it must be that soy base in it, they just don’t have the smell that I want all the way through, except the Tomato Leaf Votivo, which is just excellent.  So I ran across the Trapps again, and my goodness, they’ve expanded the line!  My favorite right now is the Rhubarb, but I found some great wood scents for my darling husband.  Why does Rhubarb smell so good?  Trapp makes their rhubarb a little sweet for my taste, but it’s still tart enough that I get to meander through the memories in my head of fresh rhubarb picking and the smell all over our hands, and then the smell of rhubarb pie baking and how tart it tasted.  I used to laugh when old people told me that it was easier to remember 30 years ago than it was to remember yesterday, but now I understand. It’s like the memories, whether scented or not, have a potency when they were made in your youth, they made treads that were so much deeper and more accessible, and they are well worn because they have been there so long, and scent deepens the memory and makes it emotionive. The smell of Rhubarb makes me think of my mom, as does fresh baked bread and Palmolive soap.  I’ve never told her that.

Pumping Perfume onto the Dance Floor — Apparently once they banned smoking in some nightclubs in Scotland, patrons began to complain about the body odor that was no longer covered up by cigarette smoke. Now they are pumping perfume onto the dance floor, they said it was strawberry and cream. I’m thinking that’s probably just going to smell like B.O. that’s been dipped in strawberries and sour milk.  All in all, I’d far rather smell smoke than body odor. [source]

My new cute haircut —  It’s all about the summer now!  Short-ish, but long enough that I can flip it out, heavy on the light part of the highlights, it’s just a shaggy, short mess, and I mean that in a good way.  So now that I’m all ready for summer or at least spring, we are having a cold, awful, horrible day? #&%*$ Colorado weather. It will probably snow a foot tonight just to chap me.  Snow in April, I never seem to get used to it.
The nicest thing about Colorado is that I can grow Daphnes here.  If you haven’t smelled a Daphne in bloom, you have missed the best smell in the world.  Whenever I smell them, I think of my boys who are mostly grown now, and I feel like a young mom again. I had three huge Daphnes growing in front of my old house that I rent to my nephew now, and that was the smell of my boys, of spring, of them out front playing in the evening as soon as it got nice, and the daphne smell just assaulting my nose in some ephemeral way. Every time I would try and get close to it to whiff, it would go away. You had to just breathe the perfumed air in the evening and not try too hard to find where it was coming from. While it had blooms, you couldn’t pick the blooms to capture the scent, you just had to enjoy it while it was there and wait another year for it to come back.

So I don’t have Daphnes at my new house, but I will this year!  I’ve ordered tons from Wayside, plus some roses from Heirloom, and I’m so ready for spring gardening. How many of you are gardeners, and do perfume people also love flower gardens too, and is that a necessary thing?  And if so, what are your favorite flowers as far as smell?  I need more gardening ideas because I plant for smell. Do all perfume lovers plant for smell? I used to plant for show, for beautiful blooms, but I’m happier now having an ugly old plant that smells like heaven than a great-looking tarted-up bloom that smells like nothing.