Outside In

By March

My apologies for my massive fail last week – remind me never to type the m-word into a post (m-word signifying those really bad headaches.)  Been awhile since I had one like that.

Second – this whole daylight savings time – compadres, whose nonsensical idea was this?  Since we moved the clock forward an hour on Monday, the teenagers are catching their bus to their local asylum o’ higher learnin’ at (body-time) six a.m. – and they’re at the end of the bus run!  And trying to get everyone to bed at night is not working out too smoothly either.  Is it true Arizona doesn’t have DST?  Maybe I could move there.  Not Phoenix, which would kill me in the summer, but up north somewhere….

But I digress.  I took a stroll through the neighborhood, full of perfume-related thoughts; please join me.

The spring thaw brings up the pervasive smell of earth – loamy, rich, wet dirt, with an occasional accent of potting soil from spring pansies and other early plantings.   An older home had a wonderfully compelling combination of smells right there for the taking in one strategic inhale  – the dank, mossy fug of a magnolia tree, the pissy smell of boxwood, and the honeysuckle-on-steroids smell of what I assume is a non-native witch hazel (I’ve been told the native species are more delicately scented.)  Add in a hint of wet brick walkway or damp slate for a nice twist.

A long, late-morning stroll does contain a few scent surprises.  The main one for me was how frequently I could detect the scent of laundry detergent or dryer sheets, floating out of the houses on a stream of warm, humid air from the dryer vents.  If I can smell drying laundry from twenty or thirty feet away, are we sure we should be putting that stuff on our clothes?

I came home from my walk with a lust for the smell of dirt and promptly threw on CB I Hate Perfumes’ Black March, which I like to pretend Christopher Brosius himself named after me.  The damp earth and faint sweetness of Black March are an ultimate spring virtual-reality scent.  Some people find it unbearably creepy; to me it is suffused with promise.  Other fine dirt scents are (obviously) Demeter Dirt and Le Labo Vetiver, a rootier, more abstract piece of earth.

Damp, wet streets?  The original Dior Fahrenheit and Annick Goutal Eau du Fier, with a jolt of tar, smell nicely of spring asphalt.  A more abstract scent, the feeling of being in the street with some wet fence and some lilacs (bonus!) is Malle’s En Passant.

Laundry detergents and dryer sheets?  You are on your own; plenty of scents out there like that, starting with Clean Fresh Laundry.  But since I don’t want my laundry to smell perfumed (unless it’s my leftover Mitsouko or Femme on the sleeve), I’m no further help.

Having reveled in Black March for a couple of days, I got to thinking how I might layer something with it to get a fuller scent-picture of the street in spring.  Something with a lot of galbanum might work here, but I opted to add the boxwoody Mandragore.  Then it needed a faint hint of sweetness, but not too sweet – L’Artisan Mure et Musc to the rescue.  The three scents were worn on different parts of my arm, so I could lean in and focus on one of them if I wanted to.

Finally, for you gardening fiends: this year my wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox) got nailed by the ice storm in February, which is when it blooms, cheering and delightful.  Mine is a cutting from my father’s yard, a wonderful shrub I grew up with, but they’re commercially available.  Anyhow, I’d written it off for the year.   It’s blooming like crazy right now, a powerful aromatic combination of honeysuckle, honey and galbanum, which can be smelled from fifteen feet away.  This is all the more astonishing when you consider the total non-showstopper quality of the blooms, which when fully opened look like the small broken pieces of popcorn at the bottom of the bowl.  (Don’t let those online close-ups fool you; the blooms, at least on mine, are fingernail sized and sparsely placed.)  If you don’t mind the mess as the blooms fall, and I don’t, the cut stems in water will perfume an entire room.

image up top: wintersweet, Wikimedia commons

  • nozknoz says:

    Lovely post, March! Still struggling to drag self forward :-(((((

    The cold, damp days of spring are great for rich but soft scents. I’ve recently worn L’AP Iris Pallida, SL La Myrrhe, BK Rose Oud, FM Le Parfum de Therese and Legendary Fragrance’s Iris Gris recreation. Plan to wear SL Bois de Violette and FM Un Fleur de Cassie soon. TDC Osmanthus works, too, when something crisp is called for.

  • Doc Elly says:

    Daylight Saving Time is one of the stupidest ideas the bureaucrats have ever had. If people want to get up an hour earlier, why don’t they just do it instead of trying to dupe everyone into thinking that we have suddenly moved into a different time zone? Every spring I’m sorry for all those poor kids who are waiting for the bus in the dark. I’m sorry for them anyway, having to get up at 6 to be at school by 7.

    • March says:

      There’s some argument that people like the extra time after work and school (spring sports are starting) but man, have they calculated the disruption costs in people’s schedules? I wonder if there are more car accidents in the morning, for instance, because it’s dark and/or people are still half asleep. DST just doesn’t make sense to me in our modern, mobile society.

  • Winifrieda says:

    Oh the psych-up migraine, that has happened to me too…and don’t get me started on daylight saving!! Governments just keep extending it down here, unless you live in a state that has had a referendum and rejected it. We are on the tail end of it now, and if you have to get up before 7 its dawn.
    yes Japan is just shocking; if that nuclear thing melts down the tsunami damage will be a bad memory while generations will feel the fallout…
    I am really thinking of my wonderful lady in Japan who I get vintage from, but I’m up in the air as to whether it would be appropriate to contact her thru’ ebay…

    • March says:

      Still watching the news, so very sad. I think you should contact your lady in Japan; why not? I’d appreciate it if it were me.

      Still wondering why there’s not a national referendum on DST.

  • Shelley says:

    DST, schmee ess tee. Stinks, it does. My child left for school in a funk, my spouse left without his glasses upon his face. It messed HARD with folks in this house this year.

    I won’t lean hard on my usual cry of “but it’s not spring here yet!,” and will focus on the fact that the time for my ritual application of Black March draws nigh. We did have one day of warm up last week, and I made sure to go out in the yard, and stroll the garden. (Sounds romantic, no? As if it were Sissinghurst, and not a square of suburban backyard.) I smelled…dirt. It was wonderful.

    En Passant. ::smiles:: wet fence, lilacs…and someone breaking bread. (I like to think of it as breaking, not baking — community over the fence and all.)

    • March says:

      And a lot of En Passant fans on here as well. Spinter it may still be in your neck of the woods, but I promise, spring is just around the corner. I used to love spring in Central MO.

  • Aparatchick says:

    I often smell the laundry sheet smell when walking through my neighborhood. But that never smells as good as laundry right off the clothesline.

    Last week the orange tree in the backyard was in bloom. Bliss. I cut one small branch, brought it in the house and had to take it outside an hour later because what is unspeakable beautiful outside in nature is overwhelming when confined indoors. Yeah, there’s a comment about freedom in there somewhere, but I don’t know exactly what. Orange blossom week is my favorite week in Florida followed by the month my neighbor’s Confederate jasmine blooms, followed by the three weeks my gardenia shrub blooms.

    I think I’m one of the few people in the world who loves DST. I grew up in the Pacific NW, where it’s light outside until 9:30 or so in the summer, so that seems normal to me. I like having daylight later in the early evening. Makes an evening stroll a wonderful thing.

    • odonata9 says:

      I’m also a DST lover! It makes the summer days so magical as they just go on forever. And it’s nice for it to be light outside when I leave the office – when it’s dark when I leave, it feels like the day is already over.

    • March says:

      Y’all late night light lovers! /:) Well, it takes all kinds …. I know what you mean about TOO MUCH FLOWER, although I probably would have loved the orange blossom. I do have to take it easy on the paperwhite narcissus bulbs — lots of people hate that smell. I’m only allowed one pot blooming at a time.

  • minette says:

    oh, and i hate DST, too. nature’s time is much, much better. but so many office workers want to have more daylight at night so they run or whatever it is they do with the extra daylight, so we are stuck with it for now.

    • March says:

      The office workers and the kids do like the extra hour, I guess, but it’s light until 8:30 (?) in the summer — would just as soon have it in the morning, myself. :)>-

  • minette says:

    lovely walk. thanks for taking me. not surprised the wintersweet smells wonderful and has less visual power – the most potently scented roses are often the least visually powerful. they breed them for looks, not for smells. (a shame. nothing more frustrating than leaning in to a bouquet of pretty roses and smelling almost nothing.)

    i love black march, too! it’s all about spring and spring and life and life and possibility and possibility and oh, yes, a little dirt. reminds me of the dirt along the riverbank at my grandparents’ old nj house.

    • March says:

      So many Black March fans on here today. And I know that about the roses. I only grow them for the smell, and they’re pretty enough, but not the showstoppers some of the fancy ones are. In fact my favorite climber looks like a funny shrub, with single-petal flowers.

  • Dionne says:

    Sigh. Yesterday was all melty and spring-like, and today it’s snowing again. I’m going to wear En Passant ANYWAY.

  • (Ms.)Christian says:

    Spring forward my ass. I’m still taking Lunesta to get used to this messing with my body clock.

    Weather is funny here. Very cold, then warm, then rainy, then cold wind, then tsunami warnings. (No, I’m not mocking Japan-I sat and wept when I saw the first footage of the tsunami and imagined helpless, innocent pets and animals dying…)

    Your post was beautiful and evocative of the smells I associated with spring, March. I make it a point to play this beautiful Donovan song around this time of year. Your post reminded me to get the CD out.

    The tune and his voice are delicate and lovely-worth a listen.

    THE LULLABY OF SPRING
    Donovan

    Rain has showered far her drip
    Splash and trickle running,
    Plant has flowered in the sand
    Shell and pebble sunning.

    So begins another spring,
    Green leaves and of berries,
    Chiff-chaff eggs are painted by
    Mother bird eating cherries.

    In the misty tangled sky
    Fast a wind is blowing,
    In the new-born rabbit’s heart
    River life is flowing.

    So begins another spring,
    Green leaves and of berries,
    Chiff-chaff eggs are painted by
    Mother bird eating cherries.

    >From the dark and wetted soil,
    Petals are unfolding.
    >From the stony village kirk,
    Easter bells of old ring.

    So begins another spring,
    Green leaves and of berries,
    Chiff-chaff eggs are painted by
    Mother bird eating cherries.

    Rain has showered far her drip
    Splash and trickle running,
    Plant has flowered in the sand
    Shell and pebble sunning.

    So begins another spring,
    Green leaves and of berries,
    Chiff-chaff eggs are painted by
    Mother bird eating cherries.

    • March says:

      What a beautiful song, thanks! And thanks for typing it all in … I know, on one level this post feels wrong and superfluous, because I keep watching the news in Japan and my heart aches for them. Other than donating money there is not much I can do.

      Aren’t you in another country? Do the clocks change?

      • (Ms.)Christian says:

        Yes, I am in “another country”-California and no, your post is not wrong just because Japan is in shambles. What I have found in my advanced years is that no matter what is happening to whom, or where-life goes on. We have to pee, feed the goldfish, go to work, buy groceries. My grandfather died in his sleep when I was 6. It was horrible, but we still had to eat breakfast, talk to people, bring the milk in. Life rolls on no matter what and we cannot change that fact of being here on earth.

        You can donate money, pray and visualize a good outcome for the country of Japan, their animals and the humans there-and keep on with your daily life. It’s all just being on The Wheel.

      • Musette says:

        I got no sense of ‘wrong and superfluous’, March. (Ms) C is right, life does go on – our being miserable over here won’t help them allay their misery over there (and vice versa). My brother just talked to some friends in Japan (he lived there for many years) and they are not immediately affected by the natural events over there – when he caught up with them they were on their way out to dinner – he was stunned for a minute, then realized that Life really does go on!

        xo >-)

      • Shelley says:

        The wheel, indeed. I think “superfluous” should be reserved for that which is unappreciated. You just appreciated dryer sheets, dirt, and the wrongly maligned wintersweet.

        Unless you can put boots on the ground in a meaningful way to help, I think that sending that which translates into resources (cash) and making sure life spins well on your turf are the best somethings to do.

  • Tom says:

    You’re right, AZ doesn’t spring forward. Not sure that would make me want to live there though..

    • March says:

      Ah, come on! Phoenix is hot as the dickens, but I think some of the northern parts are lovely. Of course, it would be hard to leave your present location.

      • Tom says:

        I like Phoenix actually. It’s just the being forced to drive everywhere thing I don’t care for. Not sure that Flagstaff would be better..

        • jen says:

          AZ stays the same except for the Navajo reservation, which goes with the rest of the country. I hated daylight savings the one time the one year we had it in AZ–went to school in the dark. Update on the travel thing–we have light rail from Mesa to Phoenix and lots of buses. I ride a neighborhod shuttle to pick up a light rail train to work downtown (I live in Tempe). Its wicked hot in the summer,a nd you need to go to the mountains to cool off. Or to San Diego, a few hours away. I wouldnt trade our great springs, with orange blossoms and palo verde, for anywhere, right now. Maybe in July.

  • Disteza says:

    Sooo with you on the DST–it has single-handedly added the icing to my many-tiered cake of woe. Craving a shot of spring yesterday, I threw on Penhaglion’s Lily and Spice, because for me, lilies = spring. It was perfect, until 4-5 hours after applying, when it was gone entirely.
    I’ve also noticed the dryer sheet smell wafting insidiously through the neighborhood; that’s definitely something I wish would go away, although it seems like the chemicals used on those things are only getting stronger and more offensive.

    • March says:

      So you noticed the dryer sheet smell too! Isn’t it astonishing? I’m used to holding my breath in the “laundry” aisle at the grocery store, but I hadn’t noticed it out in the air before. Lily and Spice sounds like a good antidote.

    • Musette says:

      I like the smell of dryer sheets on the wind (not choking the life out of us all but a whiff here and there is good). Perhaps it’s because the world is in even more upheaval than usual and my own life is often in upheaval as well….something about the smell of dryer sheets, like the drone of lawn mowers and the squeak of a swing in the park, says that Life is still going on.

      Very calming.

      xo >-)

  • Olfacta says:

    We have many flowering trees and shrubs, as you do I imagine. Atlanta is lousy with the Bradford Pear trees, a builders’ favorite (it’s cheap and grows fast) — a good metaphor for the endless sprawl of the last 30 years, until the 2008 crash, anyway — plant it, then get out. It’s glory is short-lived, because the trees split and die after a few years. The blossoms smell fishy, and that fishy smell obliterates everything else. Fortunately, their bloom time is almost over — right now, it’s cherries and redbuds, and pretty soon, dogwoods.

    • March says:

      lol, we had Bradford pears all over here, planted 20 – 30 years ago, before the county realized what a disaster they are. They’re smaller so planted by the roadsides, where they constantly split and topple over onto cars and into the street. And there’s that smell… other than that, they’re great! 😉 The city’s now removing them and replacing them with other trees.

  • Musette says:

    Thanks for the wonderful walk around the neighborhood. I was a bit distracted when I first read the post; that, coupled with the m-word reference, had me reading “I came back and threw up on Black March”……b-( glad that wasn’t the case!

    HeyheyHEY! YOU FORGOT VIOLETS AND RAINWATER!!! :-w The perfect dirt/wet pavement scent – at least if you are the >-)

    I’m having a rough morning here – nothing is wrong – it’s just that I had an anxiety attack last night (again, nothing ‘wrong’ just weird intestines (tmi?)…and now I’m vaguely nauseous from exhaustion. Anybody else get that? Jeez. Talk about TMI.

    But the whole point of that is……I am wearing Cartier Brillante today. It’s like being stabbed with a thousand diamond icepicks and is exactly what is needed to settle me down and get me through until noon, when I can take a power nap. No musk to ook a gal out, no warmth. Just ginny, icy, stabby goodness!

    xo >-)

    • March says:

      Oh, so sorry you are not feeling better! I did wonder/hope you are okay… the Cartier sounds like just the ticket for getting you through the day. Oddly enough I am still not wearing anything but I need to head out again, so I will choose something. Probably good ol’ Mandragore, which seems to be a staple right now.

      • Musette says:

        I’m fine now, thanks – just whipped from interrupted sleep! I look back on my misspent youth, all those disco nights (during the week!) …and I swear to Floyd I can’t remember how I managed that!

        The Brillante got me through the morning, and I’mo let it continue it’s magical work right through the afternoon because I can’t wrap my head around anything else anyway, might as well fly with it, right?

        xoxoxo >-)

        • Ann says:

          Hi sweetie, glad you’re feeling better and happy that Brillante was the perfect prescription.

  • Tiara says:

    I want YOUR sense of smell.

  • maggiecat says:

    Glad you’re feeling better, and I enjoyed the Spring thoughts. I’ve been wanting to set up a garden, and weighing the work involved against the rewards. Your story of wintersweet may have tipped the balance. Thank you – I think. :)

    • March says:

      Oh, you’re welcome! You can invest a wide range of efforts in a garden, depending on how regimented you want it to be. We just lost a black walnut in the back, which poisons all the plants underneath it. Now that it’s gone and there’s sun there, I may attempt a vegetable garden in a raised bed. :)>-

  • sweetlife says:

    Lovely to hear your voice again, I’ve been missing it.

    I’m in a vanilla+incense phase right now, since its been cloudy and coolish, with bursts of girly florals for the sunshiny moments–La Chasse of those Papillons, one or two of the Rosines. Oh, and Champaca, which seems to bridge the two categories.

    And right there with ya’ on Daylight savings. My understanding is that it was instituted so farmers would have extra daylight at the end of the day, which was apparently the best time to harvest, but it makes no sense at all for a place like Texas. We need our daylight in the morning, when it’s cool, not the evening, when we’re cowering indoors at the hottest time of the day….

    • March says:

      Champaca. I should dig up my decant of that and see if it’s still any good. Champaca makes me think of Thailand and traveling.

      La Chasse is such a pretty, girly scent, I can see why it’s a big seller (don’t mean that in a snotty way.)

      Yes, I had a vague recollection of the farming thing (and kids could come home and help), but given our population/work distribution now, it doesn’t make much sense to me any longer, for the reasons you note.

  • Ann says:

    Hi March, beautiful post. So glad you’re feeling better. And I’m right there with you on the DST business — yuck! My son, who needs a LOT of sleep, says: “Mom, it’s just not right — I have to go to bed while it’s still light and then get up when it’s dark!”

    • March says:

      I don’t understand DST. I should google it for a rational explanation, but I doubt there is one. We are all feeling a little sleep deprived over here. I can’t get the twins to bed, and it’s hard to wake them up!

      • Arizona does not have DST, you are right. And summer is no picnic, you can’t wear a lot of your big blooming, high-throwing favorites then. You can go up to Flag, but you’ll have to deal with 180 inches of snow in the winter.

        But right now, March, just this very instant, come stand in my backyard and at night, see the constellation Orion and inhale the creamy, star-laden, intoxicating fragrance of simultaneous lemon, orange and grapefruit blossoms.

  • Louise says:

    Aw, March, I feel that I just went for a lovely walk around the neighborhood with you. I love the smell of wet springtime dirt-and crave it, too. On recent weekend hikes, I’m just starting to notice a slight shift from winter mud to damp earth. There is hope…

    I find myself switching now between my deep orientals and my lighter springy scents. Today will be Fresh Sake-I need brightness.

    • March says:

      Ooooh, Fresh Sake sounds pretty darn great today. I’m still wallowing in the dirt. That damp earth smell is lovely in the spring.

  • Pimpinett says:

    Oh, how I envy the witch hazel and that other spring-blooming shrub, I very much doubt that my barely hardy Asian witch hazel has survived this winter. We are not nearly that far along here yet, still tons of snow and my street is covered in ice, although it is thawing.

    • March says:

      It was a tough winter all around, for sure. We had some freeze damage here, but the main thrust of it was many broken branches and in some cases, entire trees lost, which was too bad.

  • *jen says:

    Lovely post, March. Nice walk!

    I’m wearing Black March on one arm, En Passant on the other for a sniff of Spring. :)