First things – I need your help. Anyone know what this perfume is? I’ve had this bottle for years, and if it ever had a label, it was gone when I got it and I have zero idea what it is. Smells white floral, I was thinking some version of an Evyan White Shoulders type, but that’s not it, the woman’s profile is different than the one on White Shoulders. Help!
And just like that, it is spring. All the trees are green or greening, my daffodils have all bloomed, and now it is the tulips turn. The pink ladies have shot up all their green and should be disappearing soon, only to return with those gorgeous pink flowers in August.
It is almost Hummingbird time here! This week probably, so a few feeders are out to get the scouts. Then it is oriole time. I put the jelly out for them a while ago because a lot of birds and apparently the squirrels like it. It was a tough winter, they all need the energy. The watermelons, melons, broccoli, beets and sunflower sprouts are getting big for their peat pots and are now out during the day to harden up for May planting.
Planting is crazy this year – I’ve put in another cherry tree, two peach trees, am adding another big weeping cherry for the big carpet of green on my front lawn that I hate. That big expanse of lawn just bugs me. It is now getting broken up, but it took me a couple of years to decide what should go there.
Some winters you think will never end. Why is that? I remember childbirth being like that, I thought it would never be over, and then it just was, and all that before time was just nothing – well, until the next baby, and that brought it right the hell back!. It feels like two winters have just melded into each other, and this is the real spring.
Where I live, we are probably less restricted, but I keep thinking about the thing I really want to do when this is at an end, and mostly I want a nice long lunch with my lady friends – drinks, laughter, getting sleepy from too much wine and sun. I go out with family, but friends are still reluctant to go out and eat all together.
What are you going to do with spring finally arrives for you?
https://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Houbigant/Raffinee-5358.html
Raffinee by Houbigant. the perfume comes in this bottle, sweet oriental, very 80’s in the style of Poison.
I got my first vaccine yesterday, and wore the Byredo Mixed Emotions sample I won recently for the occasion. I like the currant and tea in the dry down, but WOOF is that a wacky opening. Something about the wood (papyrus?) in it reminds me faintly of Dzing!.
Spring has sprung here in California, and I’m zeroing in on what I want to plant in my yard. Mostly natives, but a few things like freesias and calla lilies I see doing well in neighbors’ yards. It’s fun to plan.
Waiting on the hummingbirds too and I want to say they show up beginning of May here in the northeast? Have to remember to give the tiger lilies some ‘food’, I guess that’s what they want, or else I’ll get nothing but green leaves again and no flowers. I am just no good at gardening. Lol!
Spring is here, too, in Virginia. I’ve been purchasing some inexpensive new clothing items in bright, cheerful colors as we get ready for soaring heat, humidity and Brood X of cicadas that show up every 17 years. No use in making the garden nice when those little monsters are gonna come and chomp it all to bits. Sorry, I don’t recognize your perfume bottle. Reminds me of Fiji (spelling?).
I would love a girls’ lunch – I’ve had a bit of time with a couple of friends but it’s been here, which is actually fine (and lovely) but it would be nice to bask in the energy of Other People as well. I’ll take what I can get, though 😉
We are lucking out with a Cold Spring, so my daffs are coming in strong and staying. The only tulips I grow are Spring Green and they are also blooming and staying (North-facing, against a wall, so they should stay awhile). This is the year I keep my hands to myself re the garden.
I’m about 2 weeks behind you re the hummer scouts, though I do put the feeders out a week early, just in case.
Yay, SPRING!
xoxoxo
I live in the Brood X area for 17-year cicadas (one of the larger broods) and my older daughters now in their 20s still remember their last appearance 2004 with absolute horror. The cicadas will emerge in a few weeks and … I dunno, I think it’s kind of amazing. Gross, but amazing.
Oh, I remember that! I know one year we had the great miller moth movement going up into the high country in Colorado. The kids were young, so probably 30 years ago, and literally every crevice was full of them. I would open my car door, and hundreds of them would fog out. Cicadas are crazy when we hit the 17-year. We have to be getting close here too. I agree, gross, amazing, something about nature that is overflowingly crazy.
I’m with you on the waiting a while to see what the garden actually wants. Years ago, when I still lived in London, I’d go with a friend to the summer open gardens in Northwest London, where we lived. Some of the stuff people did with smaller (and sometimes not so small) urban gardens was just amazing. I’m still looking for a short (ie, around 5 foot tall) umbrella shaped very gnarled tree. I kick myself that I don’t recall the name . I think it would be great plopped right in the middle of my back garden or maybe in a huge pot.
It’s weird how you have to live with the shape of things for a while – see where the sun falls, and how long and decide what really belongs there, and then make mistakes and do it again. I’ve got a couple of spots where things I pick aren’t taking – I do a sample run, but I think I’ve found the thing now that will work. I hope! I think I have one of those, probably not as gnarly as some, but it sits right by my swimming pool pump, and it is super cool and all twiggy with some leaves. I love the darn thing, kind of curly branches in places.
That perfume is Caesars Woman by Caesars World. (Why are there no apostrophes?) I screenshot your image and then used Google Lens which I only discovered this year! Anyway, it is listed on Fragrantica.
Oooh, it IS!!!!!! That’s so cool, the way you did that!
It’s such a handy trick, right?
Very cool Holly!
It really IS such a cool thing to have access to!
Wow! I’m going to remember that. I think some birder people use Lens to help them with bird identification too. I’ve used something like it for plants before – when I moved in there three years ago, it was a lot of “friend of foe” moments on plant ID. 🙂 So it’s probably worth nothing. How did i get it, I wonder?
I discovered Lens and how to do a screenshot on my phone by accident! It’s so handy – I’ve tried so many of those apps to identify plants and birds, and I’ve found this much easier and usually more accurate.
Very cool how you identified this perfume Holly! I have a vintage mini of Caesars Woman, same bottle design with plastic topper instead of glass. Smells spicy floral.
Ah – how amazing that you actually have a mini of it! I need to shuffle through my minis – I know there are a few things that I might have a hard time identifying.
No idea about the perfume, sorry Patty.
Glad to read spring is coming at you full tilt. We are moving through autumn and I’m missing my favourite local liquidambar that was cut down for a greige personalityless McMansion. It was the most colourful liquidambar I’d ever seen, like a painting of fire, and almost a perfect fir cone shape.
I definitely want in on that girlfriends lunch please. As soon as we have USA travel ability we’ll duck across.
Portia xx
I had to go look that up, we call it Sweet Gum here. Oh, that is so sad, they are beautiful trees. I would love that. I need a long gab and laugh, lots of laughs. It has just been a shit year plus, and I never drink alone, so my wine is piling up. 🙂
Spring is here in Vancouver Island! Temps are in the 20’sC/70’sF and everything is budding and blooming. Even in Montréal it is unseasonably warm. I’m shopping for a house and looking forward to planting cherry trees, roses and lilac & wisteria bushes.
No idea what that perfume is. And when this is over I don’t ever want to wear a mask again.
Me neither Tara. I hope I live through the masked eta without suffocating to death.
I thought I typed era not eta.
I’ll be wearing masks for the foreseeable future when I’m indoors in shops and once I feel comfortable returning to the yoga studio. I got hugely ill at the end of 2019 (all the symptoms of covid). Since then, with masks, in a year and a half I’ve not had anything, not even a cold. I don’t wearing masks, but I’ll take the inconvenience not to get sick.
Ack. that would be I don’t like wearing masks …
The same happened to me Cinnamon, I think I got Covid right around Christmas. I lost my sense of smell for about five days. Now, at least a couple of months, later I noticed I have a different sense of smell with certain things & chemicals -mostly shampoos and cleaning products. it kind of smells like a rotting vegetable that’s made out of metal – do you happen to have this symptom?
I didn’t lose my sense of smell that I remember, Ann. But I don’t recall much of that illness as it was sooo nasty. High fever for days, dry cough which lasted for a month and a half after the fever had receded. Tinnitus, vertigo, etc, etc.
Oh, that sounds lovely! I love Vancouver, I hope you find something perfect for you. I’m thinking next year I may do some lilac. I’d love a wisteria, but I have one on the side of the house that is making it a creepy jungle over there. I’ve got all the vinca on the ground under the big oaks and maples, and then that wisteria, and it kind of scares me to walk over there, like the ground might be full of snakes. I always wear boots when I go trimming over there. 🙂
Oh, same on the mask, never wearing again. I don’t care if it is the black plague.
Oooh! A mystery! I have no idea, but am excited to hear how this turns out. And yes — can winter please be over? We had SNOW on the ground today! A dusting, but still!
Yikes, snow!? I used to get those late snows in Colorado, sometimes into June, and they just put me off my happy every time it happened, like you do NOT belong here! 🙂 I’m thinking this year I am going all in on the fireworks display. I may put a firecracker under my masks too. 🙂