Hydro+sol

Hydro meaning water and sol meaning solution, the term hydrosol is the aromatic water that carries over the essential oil during the process of distillation. In some instances the end product is the hydrosol, the condensate water produced during a plant distillation, while in others the hydrosol is a by-product of the distillation of plant matter to obtain essential oil. This fragrant water is bursting with similar aromatherapeutic affects as the essential oil counterpart but in a water soluble format that is much more subtle.

Hydrosols have many names including distillate water, floral water, plant water and hydrolat, lat referring to the transparent milky color of the water as it initially comes out of the still. In some instances words such as floral or plant water may not be a hydrosol but a water with added scent material.

During the distillation process plant matter gently imprints the water with its molecular trace particles resulting in a fragrant water. Referred to as "waters of life" in the past, hydrosols are considered a lost art that are now circling back as a revolutionary new form of aromatherapy. The distillates have been termed as “the soul of the plant”, with the ability to transmit non-verbal messages, bypassing the thinking mind.

I distill hydrosols with a heart-fulness that begins when harvesting the material throughout the entire process to bottling. I use both a cooper and glass still, depending on the time of year and availability of plant matter.

Hydrosols contain essential oil molecules which help preserve them and in turn offers many of the benefits of the essential oil. I use them for skin care as toners, room & body misters, perfume,  deodorant and combining with other ingredients to make eco friendly cleaners, facial masks, drinks or for flavoring. Since hydrosols have a cooling quality and are said to reduce inflammation, they are especially useful in hot weather, when someone has a fever and when heat rises in the body, such as a hot flash.

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Santa Fe Pinon & Santa Monica Mountain White Sage, the word Santa means Holy in Spanish, these are indeed holy, actually “divine” is a better word.

Related posts: Elixir of Heaven, Jasmine sambac Hydrosol

The Golden Cloak of Autumn Arrives to Santa Fe

A few of the sign posts signaling the arrival of Autumn here in Santa Fe, New Mexico have been sighted. We begin with a flowering native commonly referred to as Rabbitbrush, Chamisa, and Rubber Rabbitbrush,  the latin is Ericameria nauseous and/or Chrysothamnus nauseous.

Chamisa

Above: Chamisa in June

I find Chamisa particularly interesting to watch through the seasons. In early Spring the little, elongated leaves begin to emerge with a gorgeous sage/teal color which stays through Monsoon season until late Summer when you start to see the golden yellow flower pods. In late August early September the flowers begin to open with the landscape around Santa Fe turning gold.

Above: Chamisa in August 2019

Above: Chamisa at the end of her bloom cycle September 2017

Chamisa is a drought tolerant, perennial with great value to the pollinators and animals that browse and forage. The leaves, flowers and seeds are all food sources as well as a source of shelter for small animals, hence the name rabbitbrush.

I've witnessed chamisa to be quite tolerant in the harsh desert climate where water can be scarce while the heat and wind intense. Another lovely feature of chamisa is that it provides us with a hydrosol and essential oil.

Cholla

Above: Cholla, April 2019

Above: Cholla, September 2019

The cholla (pronounced "choy-ah") cactus, also called cane, jumping and walkingstick cactus (Cylindropuntia imbricata), is another one with variety through the seasons. From my observation, in general, the fruits begin to turn yellow gold in late Summer/early Autumn and maintain this hue almost right up until May when the cholla seems to awaken with a very short window of spectacular magenta flowers. There is some variation from plant to plant, as I have seen some of the stalks go to seed and some of the fruits dry up. This is one that I am still getting to know, and as you may recall helped in bringin forward the Perfumed Bestiary series.

I've been told that The Shed in downtown Santa Fe, cooks with the fruits of cholla.

Above: Cholla, May 2019

Above: Cholla, Late June 2019

Opuntia

Our other local cactus is the Opuntia, commonly known as Prickly Pear. The fruit is the part called the prickly pear as well as tuna, sabra, nopal (paddle, plural nopales) from the Nahuatl word nōpalli for the pads, or nostle, from the Nahuatl word nōchtli for the fruit; or paddle cactus.1

Above: Opuntia, June 2019

The fruit of the opuntia is edible, another feature of the plant is that the insect is extremely valuable in the plant dye industry. Although cactus plants exist in many parts of our Earth they native to the Americas.

This beauty comes in many colors and has a cycle which is not quite as striking through the four points of the season wheel. Below is the peach colored blossom from June with of photo of how it looks now in September.

Above: Peach Opuntia, September 2019

I've heard that besides the cochineal that live on the plant, the fruits can also be used for plant dye, thus I will be mindfully gather them and doing some tests.

Above: Juniper berries, September 2019

There are many other plants that thrive in this high desert landscape, like the pinon, juniper, asters, etc. which I will share as I continue to learn, study and communicate with them.

1 Wikipedia

Aroma, Alchemy and Medicine of the Soul in Words and Images

Last Thursday (I can hardly believe its been a week already!) Cathy Skipper and Florian Birkmayer arrived in Los Angeles from Albuquerque for the transformative Alchemy and Medicine of the Soul classes and experiences beginning with the Panel on Alchemy in Cypress Park.

Originally we had set up the discussion to take place at a friends home in Woodland Hills, but as the RSVP's continued to mount I began searching for a new location. Out of the blue, we had a very generous offer via e-mail from Meike Kopp informing me that we could use her gorgeous space as a venue. Although we lost many attendees from the San Fernando Valley stretching up to Ojai, we gained the same amount back and also had a glorious, large open space which we took advantage to film the event. As soon as the footage has been edited I will share it here at the journal.

The next day the Hydrosol Distillation began at 3pm up on the warm, sunny plateau of Topanga. It was an absolutely gorgeous day which started off with taking Cathy and Florian over to visit the perfumery, lunch at Blue Table, a stop at the house to cut the white sage and then hauling all the gear up the mountain and setting up.

Auspiciously the flowering Salvia apiana, white sage, from my garden had already been pollinated by the honey bees. This was confirmed by Cathy as she used her magnifier to examine the botany of a flower. So, besides her wand, a little medicine bag with crystal offerings for plants and her journal Cathy also has her magnifier at the ready!

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

Saturday and Sunday was the two day workshop, what I consider the main course of the aromatic venue. Each morning everyone arrived and squeezed into the teaching space of the perfumery where Florian lectured about Jung, our collective imagination and shared his point of view on the Alchemical processes as a tool to recognize and move through emotional challenges. Cathy interjected regularly adding her strong intuitive approach and her own personal stories of transformation.

On Sunday we finished traversing all the alchemical processes with some work on our shadow, culminating in creating a blend and a group photo.

Monday evening was the dessert, featuring an encounter of the aromatic kind with sipping gorgeous and very diverse hydrosols. As we inhaled and sipped the high vibrational plant waters we each tuned into the message shared with each of us through the elixir.

The five days were a magical mystery ride with Cathy and Florian as the chauffeurs in partnership with the botanical intelligence from the plant kingdom. Personally, I was able to re-visit work in a very similar vein as an initiate in a Celtic Shaman group. The facilitator, Kaitryne, also had a Jungian psychology background which she had woven with Celtic & Native American shamanistic concepts. Thus there was quite a bit of overlap as well as concepts I had introduced with The Tree Of Life presentation at Bastyr.

Next stop for Cathy and Florian is teaching the two day workshop in Seattle followed by returning to New Mexico to finish up their online course.

Everlasting

Friday evening, during the Street Art Live event at Wizard (Whizin) Center a gentle soul who auspiciously resembled Frodo came by the perfumery. We began chatting and soon found we shared a love of plants, specifically those of the California wildwoods. My friend Marie, who was spending time with me at the perfumery that evening, commented on how it seemed like a visitation from Middle Earth to the Elven/Fairy realm...she believes me to be part fairy.

Eventually we ended up trading small bunches of Everlasting which also goes by the names of Immortelle and Helichrysum. He gifted me a Gnaphalium, also termed cudweed, which might be the bi-color variety. There's quite a challenge with determining the exact name since so many sources don't agree. For our purposed today lets call it Gnaphalium bicolor, a two-toned greenish perennial with sticky, woolly-white leaves that contain grey undersides...thus the secondary name of bicolor. Gnaphalium comes from the Greek meaning "lock of wool", relating to the woolly-leaves.

The elongated, dual toned leaf contains a superbly interesting aroma with notes of valerian, sage, patchouli and agarwood. Being a lover of earthy and unusual notes I'm loving it and enjoying the difficulty in pinning down the aromatic profile, particularly since it doesn't quite share similarities with its relative that goes by the same common name of Helichrysum italicum. The little papery flowers are small and creamy yellow in color with a very subtle herbaceous scent.

I gifted him Helichrysum italicum (angustifolia) organically grown in Ojai. This variety has a maple-like fragrance with very similar looking flowers to Gnaphalium bicolor although the color is golden yellow.

The other native varieties to California, that are often confused is Pearly everlasting, Anaphalis margaritacea and California everlasting, Gnaphalium californicum. The latter grows abundantly here in the Santa Monica Mountains and has a sister plant on the East coast called "White Balsam" Gnaphalium polycephalum.

Everlasting has such a perfect affinity with the Summer Solstice today as it is a plant of the Sunflower family (Asteraceae) and thrives in full sun and dry, arid hillside regions with little flowers that emulate the look of our fiery golden star which gives us light and warmth called the Sun. The word Asteraceae comes from the Greek Aster meaning star.

Roxana Illuminated Perfumes featuring helichrysum are Impromptu and the upcoming Mellifera which is found at my fan funding page or the perfumery.

Photos and text: ©Roxana Villa

Plant Dye Intensive Summary

The plant dye workshop that was originally scheduled for March 1st took place this past Sunday, on March 8th. Lucky for the teacher and attendees it was a fabulously sunny and beautiful day here in the Santa Monica Mountains which added a deeper shade of magic to the whole experience.

Mona, Greg and I arrived at the perfumery early to get things set up. The night before I prepared two things for the day, both based on lavender. The first was a whipped cream cheese and the second was a hand and body balm. For the whipped cream cheese I took one standard block of cream cheese and put it in the food processor with 1 tablespoon Hedcote lavender blossoms (from Ojai), a teaspoon dried Rosemary from our back lot and a few other random herbs that I can't remember...probably sage. I whipped all of together and then put into a glass container for the following morning.

The hand and body butter is something I've been making for a couple years. At some point soon, when I am convinced that it is a fabulous product, it will become available. If any of you fine readers would like a sample tossed into your next order please send me a note.

Back to the workshop...we set up two boiling pots and a large selection of plant material down the hallway next to the perfumery. Meanwhile, inside we set up the other items we would be using and snacks at the lavender colored table within the teaching area.

For our first project we had the option of choosing to dye fabric for a travel bag for our wool wrap or dye a silk scarf. I choose a rectangular silk scarf. The second project was a long wool shawl. Before the dying process Mona took us outside and explained the different colors that the plants might impart to our fabric. There are generalities with plants and colors, but as nature contains wild magick which cannot be tamed, sometimes the color varies. She had fun names for each of the different Eucalyptus leaves, like "Lost Hills" etc. which relates to an exact tree in an area.

We each selected a spot, spread out our fabric and began our compositions, in complete awareness of letting go to the intention of the plant divas. I choose to go for a water color type look for the scarf with colors from my palette, to achieve my desire I used plant materials that printed more in darker brown, umber and mauve hues. This included onion skins and an iron fleur de lis that would add some black.

Once we had all the plant material placed we rolled it all up and tied them with string. Greg's looked like a sushi hand roll, while mine was a super odd shape due to the fleur de lis iron. Once they were rolled and ready we through them into the pot. By the way, a nice benefit of using eucalyptus leaves and other botanicals is that it fills the space with the aromatic molecules, in this case Eucalyptus which made the day feel like we were at a spa.

While our first pieces cooked we each worked on the pocket for our wool shawl and or the travel bag. The pocket for my shawl was made of a few different fabrics including one little piece meant to hang to give it a boho type quality.

Next came the removal and unveiling of first eco printed items. When we pulled them out of the pot they were really hot and steaming, which was tricky when unrolling. Here is a photo of Teresa with hers and one of Monica, leaves and matter included. You will notice how one is more graphic and one more washes of color.

After lunch down at Blue Table we began pulling out our secondary bundles out of the pots. The unveiling of each persons piece was always exciting, producing lots of ou's and  awes.

Above is my wool shawl, freshly unrolled and below folded with pocket exposed.

I'm so grateful to have had Mona come and share her vast knowledge with each of us. It was such a wonder filled day that I wish for every one. Doing these types of activities connects us more deeply to nature and in doing so eases anxiety and increases our relationship with Gaia and other sentient beings on this planet that we share.

Next workshop with Mona will be "Color from the Kitchen" planned for April, details coming soon!

Pre-Plant Dye Prep

In preparation for tomorrows plant dye experience Mona has been pre-dying some of the little square kerchiefs which will be dyed a second time to add some magenta hues over the existing color.

I must admit that the pre-dyed silks are pretty cool on their own. I've already fallen in love with a few that I'm not sure if I will be adding magenta to or not, the one with the elemental bee face is currently hanging in the lab space of the perfumery. 

Today I became smitten with this one below in the center that has California lobata oak leaves with another elemental bee/insect type shadow being in the center. Don't worry if you don't see the elementals I see, or see something different. I tend to see, and smell, things that others don't and vice versa.

The ones with just rose leaves are stunning too....and, as stated above, Mona is making more this evening. So many possibilities!