Pikake

"Ah, these jasmines, these white jasmines!..."

~ Excerpt from The First Jasmines by Rabindranath Tagore

The fragrant little Pikake flowers continue blooming daily in the garden. Each day I go out to check if it will be a harvesting day or not. Today was such a day.


Before placing the delicate little blossoms into the tincture I take a few photos. This is the only time of year I have the opportunity to take such photos. Did you know it takes approximately eight thousand of these flowers to obtain one ounce of the precious Jasmin sambac absolute?


For the tincture I swap out the spent flowers and replace with a new fresh crop. The spent flowers I put into another jar with my pure grain alcohol just in case there is still volatile aromatics to be extracted. Today I sampled a bit of the botanical perfume tincture and am happy to report that the aroma is very fine like that of the fresh florets.


Although I may not make it to Hawaii this summer, I do have a very lovely reminder here of the Hawaiian flowers referred to as Pikake.