I power walked up the steep street which leads to the Santa Monica Mountain trails early this morning. The birds were singing, bees a humming and as the landscape shifted from homes to plant life the scent of white sage filled my lungs.
There are areas of the mountain with clusters of the native sage shrubs, Salvia apiana, which give a soft purple cast to the side of the hill. It is quite stunning. Best to appreciate it now before the city comes in to clear cut all of it as fire prevention. I am not fond of them doing this. I’d rather they mindfully go in and remove all the deadwood and non-native mustard. The
Salvia apiana, is a member of the California Chaparral Biome and held sacred by the Native People of America. It is the sage often used for smudging. We use it as our incense for its warm and woody fragrance.
Our perfume Chaparral, consisting of botanical essences and handcrafted tinctures, is starting to run low. Inhaling the fresh, woody aromatics of the landscape, I contemplated deepening the palette of this fragrance.
It’s time to go on a hike with Meghan, Queen of the Chaparral. Meghan is one of my girlfriends who has a deep connection with the flora and fauna. She is adept at tracking and embodies earth element. We’ve been attempting getting together since she returned from a sojourn in South Africa. The time is ripe!
Roxana Illuminated Perfume™
Chaparral Botanical Perfume
The Chaparral Institute
6 comments:
How wonderful. I have only had the opportunity to smell dried sage but I love it.
Hi there,
Thanks for visiting my site! I love, LOVE your perfume shop!! It all sounds so divine. Your blog is great too. I have so much to say. Each scent sounded like a great escape. I would love to try out the lyra- not sure if it's because I read it last that it stuck out in mind but it sounded enchanting as well as the Sierra...really hard to make up my mind though!! I'd like to link up to your shop...
thx! :)
Blossomingtree,
What a lovely name! The essential oil of Salvia alpiana is similar to the scent in the wild. The aromatic is a bit "fresher" from the live plant where as both the essential oil and the dried variety has more of a camphoraceous quality.
I bet you have some beautiful aromatic plants in your part of the world.
How terrific to meet you. I love your blog and what you are doing. I organized a holistic moms group just after birthing my daughter naturally with another new mom. It was before holistic mom groups existed. We would meet once a month at The Phoenix Bookstore here in LA.
Cheers to you and all things green and raising our children consciously!
Ahh...thank you so much for that info. I will definitely look more into it.
I live in Michigan and yes we have our share of aromatic plants. I didn't realize how many until I looked it up (after your post). I'm planning on doing more research on them. So I thank you for bringing that up as well.:)
Nice graphic to represent your lovely name.
:-)
I'll bet the native plants in Michigan are much more lush than our natives. Michigan, with it's change of season and much abundant rainfall, probably has natives more similar to that of Europe. I would love to hear what you discover on your adventure.
Cheers!
Post a Comment