Self-Seeding

We’re about to enter heatwave number 3. Duration of two weeks, it looks like, this time. My jasmine is anarchic and I am pondering getting Chanel in to harvest the flowers. Good way to make a bit of side cash. Sometimes the house smells of a sublime mix of jasmine and lily.

Self-seeding… It’s what some plants do to spread themselves. Their seeds are carried on the wind etc and plants pop up elsewhere. For example, my erigeron and black violet, the former being one plant put in the front wall about three years ago which now has migrated next door both sides, and the latter, planted 15 years ago, is now all over the village, quite far from where it originated.

In this vein I have fraise des bois, the little wild strawberries, which showed up a few years ago as one plant. I think it was deposited by a seagull flying south to the Atlantic. I now have many plants and runners. I leave that fruit for the animals (birds, field mice).

One year I had two enormous and very beautiful foxglove plants. Sadly, I took them out fairly quickly as they aren’t good for dogs. Joe the lab didn’t bother with them (as he hasn’t bothered with the errant daffodils – I’ve removed the bulbs several times but I usually have one plant pop up each year).

Sometimes the process needs help, as in my Nepalese lilies. I got a couple of bulbs at Amsterdam’s Tulip museum (a very worthwhile and interesting place if you find yourself in Amsterdam – also has better quality bulbs vs the Bloemenmarkt, where the cut flowers are better than the bulbs, IMHO). Divided and moved and I think I now have seven or eight stalks.

So, where am I going with this?

I was thinking about how perfumistas become perfumistas. I’m not talking about people/influencers who have perfume collections largely made up of easily accessible stuff even if it is posed as niche (I’m looking at you, Byredo). Rather, I have in mind the person who bought something, one thing, which then sparked a whole self-seeding of an idiosyncratic collection – plus the desire to go out and sample more widely, and potentially seek out others like themselves in order to fertilize the growth of their fragrance knowledge.

In a way, I view self-seeding plants as being curious about life beyond where they started out. They aren’t your self-contained rose bushes or mock orange, or dwarf trees, like the brown fig, which exist as their own entities and only potentially contemplate whether they fruit that year or not.

Anyway, that popped into my head recently so I’m posting about it.

I got my hair cut last week and went into town skin commando with the hope of finding something interesting to talk about.

I did put on Estee Lauder Youth Dew because I hadn’t visited with it in a long while. Has it been reformulated? I recall it being wilder and witchier than this iteration. It still smells good but in a more straight-forward way. It has nothing on Aromatics Elixir, which still smells really out there.

The other thing I looked at was Lush Lord of Misrule. Now, this takes itself quite seriously but is also quite fun in a Midsummer Night’s Dream cheeky way. Black pepper, patchouli and vanilla which is spicy and rooty, but seated in a very decent bourbon vanilla. And it’s £30 for 30 ml. Not earth-shattering but not a bad buy if you’re feeling that sort of perfume: sweet spicy with a kick – and want to be able to spray with such abandon that people move away from you when you get on the train. Dries down to a lovely boozy vanilla.

And, finally, I pulled out Le Labo Ylang 49 for the first time in a while (ylang ylang, patchouli, oakmoss, gardenia, vetiver, benzoin and sandalwood). This is great in the heat. I know others proclaim that big white florals can sing during hot weather but it’s so humid here in general that they can feel like too much. This works. For whatever reason.

So, plants … are you a gardener (I know a fair few are) and do you approve of self-seeding or want your plants to behave themselves? How do you view your perfume development – how did it start (ie, do you recall the first bottle that then set you off)? Have you built a big collection, and do you feel a bit out of control when it comes to buying perfume?

Pics: mine, wiki, pexels

Query for gardeners/plant people: My orchid, which was doing very well, has gone a bit dormant. I cleaned its roots, replaced the bark, cut it back, spritz it with water. What am I doing wrong? TIA