Posse! I’m not quite suuure how this happened.
As you probably know I’m an inveterate gardener. Bulbs, roses, pretty much anything herbaceous has a 96% chance of not only surviving but thriving in my loving care. Deciduous? You betcheruous!
House plants? Eh.
Cacti and Succulents? NAHMGOOD.
So. Tell me how this happened! I guess it started with a trip to Lowe’s greenhouse on a vicious Winter’s day, when the warmth and humidity conspired to soothe my soul and lull me into thinking I needed a genre of plants I knew nothing about AND would require some living space in my beensy little house. Rescuing a lace aloe from the bin, succumbing to the lure of those charming Holiday cacti at Walmart (did you know they are not actually cacti?)… L’il Missy sending me a Night Blooming Cereus which I have not yet killed, though it refuses to grow beyond an inch or two… I guess it’ll bloom when I am ninety. Or not.
Who Knew??
Over the past year I have learned a bit about how to care for them (they REALLY do not like to be watered overmuch – my Christmas Carol Aloe is STILL recovering from being left on the porch stairs during a deluge. Sorry, Carol! I’ll try to do better)…. and, shockingly, (because I am still a snob about this little ‘burg) finding someone whose hobby is… Cacti and Succulents! It came about when I spied what I thought was a giant aloe but turned out to be a medium-sized Agave. Because it was sitting on a cute metal piecrust table at the curve of the cottage’s wraparound porch I crafted a narrative wherein the owner of said cottage/agave was an elderly plantsperson. Uh. No. Turns out the agave’s person is a 30yr old guy! Huh. But he knows his stuff and educated me on how to transplant ‘pups’, as he snapped off a pup from his cochineal nopale cactus THAT I DID NOT WANT! (sigh) but he’s actually doing quite well in his new home, looking for all the world like some comical Pixar character :: don’t tell anybody but I’ve actually grown quite fond of him::
he IS cute!!
And the agave’s name is Big Mama. She is gorgeous! And terrifying! And her person is madly in love with her.
Big Mama agave
Of course… as I’ve been tending to these plants I starting thinking about perfumes that evoke the desert. Now. Let’s be clear: I am a rainforest type o’ gal. Dry heat is absurd and it makes my face itch and my cuticles fly off my fingers. There is not enough oil IN THE WORLD to keep my skin from … oh, you get the idea. But that doesn’t mean the desert doesn’t have its own particular beauty. When I searched the notes for ‘perfumes that evoke the desert/ smell of the desert ‘ interesting ones came up – Andy Tauer’s masterpiece, of course – L’Air du Desert Marocain, the amber, woody perfume that evokes the feeling of the Moroccan desert at night (I don’t know about you, but I do NOT want to be in a desert (or a rainforest, for that matter) at night. Stuff HUNTS at night. ). This really is a gorgeous scent – not quite me because I’m not really Team Amber but I do appreciate it. He’s just released a Noir (?) version but again, Not Team Amber. If any of you have tried it, please let us know!
One I have not tried but omg! The name alone is giving me LIFE! Cactus Abduction by Heretic Parfums. As with a lot of desert-themed scents this has a creosote note, which for me is challenging in nature and ‘iffy’ in a perfume. But… c’mon! Gotta try it since, apparently, I’ve become a bit of a cactus rustler (Big Box rejects/hostages only – no going out into the wilderness because That is Bad AND it Ain’t Gonna Happen because I am not a Wilderness kinda gal). Or wait… is it the cactus that is doing the abduction? That would be even weirder.
Byredo Mojave Ghost which I remember sampling when Barneys was still around (omg I do miss that store – even though it was like they were TRYING to lose business, putting Beauty in the basement). It’s been ages since I sampled it but I remember the ambrette being much more in the background. Byredo has a newer scent called Desert Dawn, which I haven’t sniffed and if this vicious Fragrantica review is any indication, I do not need to throw myself into a tizzy looking for it.
Solstice Scents (which I first learned of back when we had the LA Scentsation bus tour – that was a GRAND time!) has a well-regarded perfume called Desert Thunderstorm. Lots of resin, pine, creosote, rain notes… anybody else and I might give it a hard pass but the scents I have tried from this line have been interesting and well-crafted. Hmmm…
So. That’s my cacti/succulent desert story! Do any of you grow them? Do any of you live in/visit the desert? I confess to being somewhat nervous around all that … desertness. And NO! I am not going out into the desert at night. I’m about as diurnal as they come and if it’s night it’d better be a well-lit night.
Surrender to Chance has nearly all of these PLUS a whole lot more desert-themed perfumes, including one from Dawn Spencer Hurwitz called Rattlesnake Musk! Check them out at surrendertochance.com