The linden trees are blooming in Brooklyn once again. I wait for this time every year, the two weeks when the June air, just before the collasal summer heat, is heavenly sweet with linden. The genus, Tilia, also called lime tree in Britian, is a deciduous tree with heart shaped leaves, native to Europe and North America. The flowers are perfect, in other words bisexual, carrying both male and female parts and are pollinated by insects. The trees can live for centuries and there is one in Gloucestershire that is deemed to be 2000 years old.
The ambrosial aroma of these tiny flowers draws millions of bees and creates linden honey, a pale colored honey despite it's strong aroma and taste. The aroma is described as woody, pharmacy and fresh, also described as mint, balsamic, menthol and camphor. Therapeutically the honey is used primarily for treating colds and fever and is said to strengthen the heart. It is reputed to be one of the best tasting and most valuable honeys in the world.
Medicinally the flowers have been used by herbalists to cure insomnia and nervous anxiety. A tissane is also good for colds, fevers and nervous headaches. It is said to be one of the best herbs for hypertension, second only to hawthorne.
I took a walk up my block one morning and harvested about a pound of linden blossoms. In the cool shade of the tree I had only to reach up and gently pull the copious blossoms into my muslin bag. They're drying in baskets laid with parchment all over the kitchen. I'm also tincturing some as I did last summer using successive batches of flowers macerated in the same alcohol. I'm planning to use it as a perfume base. It's a difficult aroma to capture and the absolutes I've sampled are lovely but don't come close to capturing it's elusive sweetness. Even the co2's I've come across, although close, don't really possess it's charms. It's on it's third round of flowers now and has turned a beautiful pale yellow/green. The aroma is sweet and has taken on some of the notes in the flowers. It doesn't have much tenacity and it's very faint but if the right notes are built around it and don't dominate it I think it will give some lovely top notes to a summery fragrance. (More on tincturing later.)
In Proust's Swann's Way the narrator dips a petite madeleine into a cup of
Tilia blossom tea. The aroma and taste of cake and tea triggers his first conscious involuntary memory.
Indeed, the gentle fragrance in the afternoon air triggers memories of
June in the late 80's when I first moved to my neighborhood, Park Slope, and had to know
where that iniminable fragrance was coming from.
"When from the distant past nothing remains, after the beings have
died, after the things are destroyed and scattered, still, alone, more
fragile, yet more vital, more insubstantial, more persistent, more
faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like
souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the
ruins of everything else; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost
impalpable drop of their essence, the immense architecture of memory.
"Yet again I had recalled the taste of a bit of madeleine dunked in a
linden-flower tea which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet
know and must long await the discovery of why this memory made me so
happy), immediately the old gray house on the street where her room was
found, arose like a theatrical tableau…"
–
Marcel Proust,
Du côté de chez Swann (1913) in:
À la recherche du temps perdu vol. 1, p. 47 (Pléiade ed. 1954)(S.H. transl.)
It's official. I've begun teaching small groups in my cozy and intimate home studio. I've been wanting to teach here for many years and the surprise closing of 3rd Ward last month deemed it time to begin. I taught a beginner's class a few weeks ago but this past Saturday I taught my Fougere Workshop, the one I've been talking about for months now.
After taking in the samples and getting an idea of the generalities of a fougere and the wide breadth of different varieties we explored the materials in a little more depth. Tonka bean, hay absolute, sweet clover absolute, oak moss, cedar moss, ho wood and cassia as well as a selection of lavender essential oils, absolutes and concretes were introduced. At this point the students set out to make their own quintessential fougere. After a little gentle critiquing of their creations we went further and discussed the different classifications more in depth (amber, floral, fresh, leather, oriental and precious wood fougere's). A few new materials were introduced such as davana, buddahwood, ambrette, choya nak, aglaia and magnolia and then the students set out to create their second perfume.
Base: tonka bean, sweet clover, oak moss, fossilized amber and tobacco absolutes with vanilla CO2
