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"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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
4 comments:
This post makes me yearn for a jasmine... sigh... I'll have to be optimistic and start a wish list...
Do you grow yours outdoors ? I thought these were not cold hardy...
I'm in So Cal, thus I can keep them outside all year round.
Mmm Jasmine. How I love your Cimbalom! The beauty of the jasmine intertwined with sultry patchouli makes my knees weak. ~Angie
Hi Angie! I too am a total nut for Cimbalom, so yummy. xo
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