CLEANING HOUSE AND STARTING OVER

All last week I’ve been in a cleaning frenzy. I’m not usually a compulsive cleaner – in fact, I’m not a cleaner at all - but there’s something about starting the year off with a clean house that is both comforting and liberating. I cleaned things that hadn’t been cleaned for ages, like the floor of the pantry, under the bed, and the work table in the solarium. At school, I shredded old exams and repotted two of my three office plants, and I deleted thousands of old e-mails in all of my accounts. I took boxes of stuff to the local thrift store and threw out old odd-sized cardboard boxes that I’d been saving like a card-carrying hoarder. Now it’s time to get back to the blog.

Yesterday I picked the first of the second crop of brown turkey figs. There are so many that I’m freezing most of them to go with the earlier batch, and plan to make jam later this fall. The rains have come and swollen the figs to gigantic proportions. The tree has grown so tall that we can’t reach the fruit on the top branches even with a ladder, so the heavy, split figs from the top branches plop down on the ground, explode, and make a mess. I’ve never in my life done any canning, so jam-making will be a new adventure.

Today we’re going with Michael’s family to harvest hazelnuts from a farm up north, near Bellingham. We have wild hazelnut trees growing on our property, but not a single nut survives the squirrels, who eat them while they’re still green, or bury them and forget where they put them, creating more trees in the spring. I have no idea how a nut farm stays squirrel-free, but maybe I’ll find out.

The forest outside my window is still lush and green, but here and there I see signs of autumn color starting to tint the trees. I was just putting together a batch of Devil Scent discovery sets, and realized that Dev Two is the perfect fall scent, spicy and smoky. I think I’ll wear it for hazelnut hunting today. It’s strange how, after not smelling one of my perfumes for a while, I revisit it with a new nose and realize how much I really enjoy it.

All summer long I’ve been neglecting this blog, but I’m going to try to get back into a routine of posting. Today is the first day of the new effort!

[Today I took the lazy way out, so all images are from Wikimedia] 

“BEST OF 2013” LIST

It seems to be a customary end-of–the-year ritual for bloggers to make their “best of” lists. I’m not sure I could do that because singling out one thing as “best” automatically relegates a whole host of other equally good things to the category of “second-best” or “not so good”, depending on how you look at it. So this is not my “best of” list, it’s a list of random things in different categories that I enjoyed and/or discovered in 2013.

Fruit: The second crop of Brown Turkey figs (higos) that appeared on our tree this fall by the hundreds. They were the biggest, juiciest, sweetest figs I’ve ever eaten. I highly recommend this variety of fig tree.

Cat: Our Maine Coon cat, Jasper, has just completed his first year with us, and settled in nicely. He has all of the good features of a dog and none of the bad ones. He comes when he’s called, follows us around without being needy, wakes me up in the morning with a gentle mew and pat on the face, and comes and goes as he pleases, occasionally catching a rat or mouse.

Drink: The home-brewed ginger kombucha that one of Michael’s relatives gave us last week. It’s fizzy, it’s tasty, and it’s got to be good for you! I may try brewing some myself.

Tincture: The tincture made with dried fig leaves turned out wonderfully sweet and tonka-like. I'm going to use it in a perfume this year. 

Orchid: Laelia rubescens, with its big snowballs of purple-throated white flowers on crazy long stalks. It’s blooming now, with an interesting fragrance reminiscent of Ben-Gay, a sports rub that contains methyl salicylate. The photo is from a couple of years ago. This year it has two big spikes, each with a dozen flowers. To pollinate or not to pollinate, that is the question. 

Perfume show: The San Francisco Artisan Fragrance Salon sponsored by Taste TV is quickly becoming the premiere perfume event on the West Coast. It’s grown and prospered since its inception at a small art gallery two years ago, and will take place for the third time on March 15, 2014, with nearly two dozen participants, including Olympic Orchids.

 

Oud: Chinese Exclusive from Ensar Oud. To me, this is the prototype of oud, the ultimate woody fragrance. It’s an indescribable scent to meditate to, sleep on, or just inhale for pure pleasure.

Perfume discovery: A long-neglected and untried sample of Complex by Boadicea the Victorious. For the first few hours I imagined it as being what an ancient, defunct cave-dwelling would smell like, discovered during the clear-cutting of a hillside evergreen forest, complete with the dark mineral scent of the rock walls, the slightly sooty scent of old fires long extinguished, and the pungent smell of mortally wounded trees and herbs all around. A lot of people who post reviews seem to hate it with a passion. All the more reason to love it.

Bird sighting: A few days ago we walked down to the park at the bottom of the hill, where we heard some excited chirping. When I looked down, there were two of the cutest little birds I’ve ever seen, scratching in the leaves. They were a patterned olive color with bright, broad, neon-yellow stripes on their heads. Both birds seemed to have no fear, approaching us as if they were curious to see what we were doing, looking up at us. Back at home I looked them up and discovered that they were golden-crowned kinglets. I don’t recall ever seeing these birds before even though they must be native. 

Natural sound: The sound of palm-leaves rattling in the wind. It’s somehow disturbing and reassuring at the same time.  

I could keep going all day, so that’s probably enough of a “best-of ” list for one post. What are some random things that you enjoyed in 2013? 

[All photos are mine except for the golden-crowned kinglet, which is adapted from Wikimedia]