Spring Flowers

Spring flowers begin blooming here in Los Angeles in January with our native white ceanothus. The little sky blue, rosemary flowers on our back slope usually start up at this time as well, which begins to hum with the sounds of busy bees. The cascade of colors then slowly ebbs its way in with the blue ceonothus, also referred to as California lilac. The photo above is the one on our front slope which is very happy.

Although we had a bit of rain in the early part of the new year elemental water has become scarce once again, with only a few sprinkles now and then. It sure would be helpful to have more rain before we go into the dry, hot months looming around the corner.

I've been so immersed with assembling all the bits and pieces for the Art of Botanical Perfume online course and making/fulfilling perfume orders that most other aspects of life have dropped away. The content for the course includes both written material and video. Although the footage for each module was shot and a first draft of the edits sent over, Greg has been sweetening this footage with his artistry.

Only Modules 1-4 have been released so far, mostly as written content, the videos are being added slowly as Greg finishes them up. The kit I designed with Eden Botanicals is now complete and were sent to students last week. Modules 5, 6 and 7 will be released on April 17th..with or without the corresponding videos.

One of the students sent in this note to Jade today, who then forwarded it to me:

"I am doing the art of botanical perfumery with Roxana Villa. And it's absolutely beautiful.  Hands down one of my favorite courses ever. And I have taken a lot. I love all the sensory stimulation writhing the course and extra credit pieces. I'm so glad you have brought this to your course menu."

Notes such of these make all the hard work so much lighter. I mentioned to Greg that when we are complete with all this a vacation is certainly on the horizon.

Thus, my absence here at the journal is due to the overwhelming amount of work involved with launching a sensory rich course. The challenge with detail oriented / perfectionist people like Greg and I, is that we have high ideals. In the end its a good thing but in the middle is the worst. One of the students sent me this note after reading my apology regarding the delay in including the videos with the launch of each Module.

"You need Chaos in your Soul to give birth to a Dancing Star." 

~ Nietzsche