The Garden Escape

I have a wider than average fire escape on the back of my brownstone apartment.  The window is large and fairly easy to get in and out of.  The sill is wide and comfortable to sit on so over the years it hasn't been too hard to assemble a small garden.  I've scavenged for pots for years and have a hodgepodge collection.  I do my best to arrange them so that if there was indeed a fire that everyone would be able to navigate through it into the garden below.                                                                                                                                             I've been doing this for more than a few years now and I've learned a thing or two about tomatoes and beans in pots.  Obviously it starts with the soil. I always set aside a larger pot to be used somewhat as a mixing bowl.  I dump soil from last year's pots into the large one and then mix it nearly equally with freshly sifted compost from 6/15. As other pots are dumped out, the soil is amended and they're filled with fresh soil.

Since it's challenging for me to get to a nursery I have to use my resources to find good plants.  There are a couple of vegetable markets nearby that sell flats of annuals, herbs and some vegetables including tomatoes.  I have a stockpile of seeds plus a trip to my community garden can yield some nice plantings, notably nicotiana, shiso, kale, calendula, mints and whatever else looks like it might work.

It's actually quite a productive little garden.  Every day I pick a few green beans and set them aside. After five days time I've got enough to throw into a dish.  The same is true for the kale (although anyone that knows me knows I grew nothing but kale in my community garden plot so this is a drop in the bucket).  I grow enough basil to fill my freezer with pesto for the year and some to give away. I've also yielded, so far, six beautiful tomatoes.  I still have eight tomatoes on the vine, still green, so hoping for a few warms days to finish those.

Other years I've grown a lot of fragrant flowers, notably nicotiana, a fluffy white flowering tobacco. It's gorgeous during the day but only at night it develops a sweet white flower fragrance.  If I keep the windows open the breeze pleasantly fragrances my bedroom. I can lie in bed and catch a sweet whiff wafting in from the Escape.

Two very large tomato plants in a window box. It needs a lot of water and to be top dressed with compost a few times per year. They grew very long and about once a week I'd have to climb the stairs and loosely tie them to the railing.

I brought back some kale and nicotiana from 6/15.  Whenever I saw a bare spot in the soil I'd plant bush beans. They ended up cascading over the side, dripping with beans when mature.

This window box faces my neighbors, a couple with two small boys. The pole beans do most of the cammouflage and the basil gets bushy and creates a nice screen. It also makes for neighborly-ness as I pass fresh cuttings over the railing.

The purple podded pole beans grew halfway up the windows on the third floor!  They've never been so robust before. They bore a lot of fruit but way up past where I could harvest it so, of course, it all went to seed.  Therefore the plant thought it had done its work and started to wither - thus all of the yellow leaves.  I've planted beans for years, using the seeds from the pods that fall during the winter.  Next year, tho, I'm planting some kind of annual flowering vine, maybe something fragrant for the breeze to blow in.

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)

I'm growing a giant mullein plant this year. They usually plant themselves, with the help of the birds who deposit them arbitrarily.  This one is in my community garden herb plot which I tend.  Actually a bird deposited the seed outside of the plot and it's growing out of the stone border.  I could tell early on that it was going to be an extraordinary specimen.  A rule in our garden is to keep weeds out of the paths as well as the perimeter of the plot. Anything growing outside of it is up for grabs by the committee that oversees the annual plant sale.  In order to save it from that fate (mullein doesn't like to be transplanted - plus I wanted it for the herb garden) I set some stones around it to let everyone know that this was to be kept.  Every couple of days when I came to check on the plot the mullein was bigger so I'd adjust the stones to compensate.  It has apparently relished the attention to the point where now there is a big bulge coming out of the plot.  It's quite a spectacle and a source of amusement amongst my fellow gardeners.

Verbascum thapsus is native to Europe, Asia and

North America and is a relative of one of my favorite plants, foxglove.  It can grow in poor soil which is probably why this specimen is so happy growing outside of the plot rather than in the compost rich soil inside.  The flowers are capable of self fertilization (so I'll remember to shake the seed head this coming autumn).  They have a dense mass of thick hairs on either side making them very soft to the touch.  They frequently grow to four or five feet - this one reached seven or eight!

Mullein is a demulcent, meaning that it forms a soothing film over mucous membranes relieving minor pain and inflammation.  It has emollient and astringent properties making it a great herb for dry coughs.  It also has sedative qualities.  A tea can be made of the leaves but be sure to strain the hairs carefully as they irritate the mucous membranes.  The leaves are sometimes smoked to relieve irritation of the respiratory mucous membranes.  Smoking the dried herb can be beneficial for asthma and spasmodic coughs.

I've dried some leaves to prepare for winter tisanes and have tinctured some for sale on Etsy.

Capturing the Elusive Violet

The Elusive Fragrance of Violet

I've been, along with many others, attempting to capture it's ethereal aroma in a bottle for a very long time. After working on two violet perfumes for over a year it finally occurred to me that I needed to stop everything I was doing and once again focus on creating a violet accord.

The elusive shrinking violet. The chemicals in them that give them their signature scent are ionones, specifically alpha and beta ionones. After having purchased a bottle of the isolated molecule alpha ionone from the talented Mandy Aftel I thought I was all the way there. What I realized was that it was only part of the equation.  I'd been using alpha ionone as the violet note and building around that.  What I needed was an accord (including alpha ionone) that I could use as a single note.

I did a little research on the chemical makeup of the violet and found some formulas for synthetic violet accords.  Once I had that I searched for natural oils that share some of that chemical makeup. Alpha ionone is a tricky substance to work with.  It awards the sniffer with a temporary anosmia after one or two whiffs making it particularly difficult as you have to take constant breaks to allow your nose to catch up.  After many trials I finally hit on something that captures the note in a pleasing way. At least I think I have.  Alpha ionone is the shapeshifter of all time, it changes constantly.

Now I begin working on my perfume again, basically starting from scratch using the accord as a single element. The one I'm working on currently is really a request from a small group of fans of one of my earliest perfumes, The Nethermead, named after a very special meadow in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. You must traverse The Midwood, an original managed forrest, and cross The Ambergill Ravine to get to the violet strewn meadow. The original perfume used synthetics of violet and amber, which I would never do now, with atlas cedarwood on the top. The amber note is being replicated by an amber accord I made a while back which is mostly labdanum paired with smokey fossilized amber. Violet accord will predominate the heart of the perfume along with coffee flower and nutmeg absolute.  I'm playing around with a variety of cedarwoods, primarily Japanese hinoki, and linalool rich ho wood. All subject to change, of course!

Yes, elusive, to say the least.  A plant with an aroma that robs the nose of its abilities is very elusive indeed. Stranger still is the fact that those beautiful purple flowers the plant sends up in the spring are not really flowers at all, they have no sexual parts.  The true flower comes up later in the season, loaded with seeds.

The violets that grow in my area, although lovely, have no particular scent.  The ones that do, viola odorata, are hard to come by.  I've attempted starting them from seed to no avail.  Last week the talented and darling Dabney Rose sent me four fragrant violet plants in the US Mail.  They're now safely tucked away in my community garden plot.  May they thrive and multiply!  Many thanks to Dabney!

My nose should be rested by now, time to roll around in a meadow of violets.

Lovely Review of Sol de la Foret

Victoria Jent of the fragrance and beauty blog EauMG.net has written a lovely review of Sol de la Foret.

"Sol de la Foret is a dark as a forest during the new moon. The heart introduces a spicy, clove-like carnation floral with a musky sage, still retaining a balance of bitter and sweet.The dry-down radiates warmth with a dry oakmoss and hay – sweet and musky. Overall, the fragrance has a lush vintage feel and to me, this is absolutely gorgeous."

I'm over the moon (although a bit tardy in posting this!).
Thanks Victoria!

Sweet Woodruff

Sweet Woodruff growing in the 6/15 Green Herb Garden

About ten years ago I bought a sweet woodruff plant from the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.  I put it in the postage stamp garden in the front of my brownstone where it lived for a few years before I transplanted it to the newly renovated herb garden at 6/15 Green Community Garden.  The first spring that it came back in it's new spot I decided to try to make May Wine.  If memory serves I picked several blooming branches and twisted or wrung them out to bruise them and stuffed them into a bottle of German Rhine wine.  Then I recorked the bottle and let it sit for about a week before I filtered and drank it.  I remember loving it, the woodruff had added a green and sort of balsamic note to the sweet wine.

The wine was meant to be drunk on May Day and I never got the timing right again and so never made it again.  It's a shame that I denied myself all those years simply because I couldn't drink it on the actual day.  This year, with spring coming early, I had a chance to catch it in time, not to make May Wine, but to make liqueur.

Sweet Woodruff (Asperula odorata) was used as a medicine in the Middle Ages, mostly as either a poltice for cuts and wounds or a strong decoction for stomach troubles.  It is known mostly for its sweet scent due to its high coumarin content, the chemical known for giving new mown hay its distinctive odor.  Bundles and garlands of woodruff were hung around the house in the heat of summer to "attemper the air, cool and make fresh the place, to the delight and comfort of such as are therein" and is reported to "make a man merry" according to Gerard.  The dried herb may also be kept among linens to sweeten them and protect them from insects.  It was also once used to stuff beds.

Sweet Woodruff drying on parchment

I've read that the coumarins in the plant don't come out until the plant dries.  I picked a small amount and left it to dry overnight on a parchment lined rack.  Right around the 24 hour mark I noticed that the leaves had taken on the distinct smell of fresh mown hay.  It was delicate but it was there.  I thought I'd leave it another day and see if it deepened.  The following morning the leaves had lost their scent almost entirely.  I picked another bunch and kept an eye on it around the 24 hour mark and began my maceration then.  I wrung it out much like I did with the wine and poured a cup of vodka over it.  The liquid began to take on a lovely pale green which deepened to the color of good fruity olive oil.  After two days I decanted it.  It tastes and smells of grass with a honeyed hay note.  I've made three successive batches.  I'd like to try sweetening some to make liqueur, and save some to add to the herb liqueur I'd like to make from the 6/15 Herb Garden this summer.  And of course some of it will be experimented with in Cocktail Lab.  I'll run out eventually but it will be just another thing to look forward to next spring.

Three batches of Sweet Woodruff Vodka

New Extracts

Chocolate Mint and Peach Tea extract

Back in June I posted about my absolute obsession with tincturing and macerating.  My garden was in full thrust and I was still heady from my recent trip to Mandy Aftel's natural perfume workshop in Berkeley.  My mission, originally, was to take advantage of my garden to create some alcohol bases to make perfumes with.  I ventured a little further afield and ended up tincturing dried jasmine blossoms and, most rewardingly, tea.

My biggest success was with an organic loose leaf peach flavored tea.  It's difficult to find a fruity note in natural oils so originally I was simply looking for that.  What I discovered was that the extracted liqueur was so much richer and more complex than I could have imagined.  I dabbed it on my wrists constantly all summer long and inhaled deeply that sweet, smokey aroma reminiscent of hundreds of comforting afternoons with my hands wrapped around a warm cup.

My other big success in extract making was with the chocolate mint taking over my community garden plot.  I knew from infusing it in vodka that the alcohol seemed to really extend the chocolate flavor, much more so than in a cup of herb tissane.  I finely chopped up about a cup of mint and poured enough 190 proof vodka over it to cover and let it sit for a few days.  After straining it I added another cup of chopped herb to make it double strength.

I quite naturally started to think about how to use the extracts in food.  I think their flavors would lend themselves to some delicious desserts, most notably ice cream and sorbets.  I started to experiment with using them in seltzer and, not surprisingly, they were delicious.  Peach tea seltzer has now become a favorite of mine and I can't keep enough extract in the house.  As the bubbly glass approaches your nose you can't help but be overwhelmed by it's gorgeous bouquet.  About a half teaspoon to a teaspoon works nicely in a ten to twelve ounce glass of sparkling water.  I'm spoiled now, I'll never again buy a lemon, lime or (horror of horrors) artificial black cherry flavored seltzer again.

Tinctures, Extracts and Infusions

Linden tincture filtering.

This season has me wanting to capture as much of it's flavors and fragrances as I possibly can.  After my recent trip to California to learn more about natural perfumery I've been hungry to gather new fragrant ingredients.  I thought I might tincture a few things to add to my perfume organ.

Linden blossoms drying.

I started with trying to capture the incredible, brief and elusive fragrance of linden.  Where I live in Brooklyn there are many linden trees and there is a two week period at the end of June that is phenominaly fragrant.  I recently bought a bottle of linden CO2 from Aftelier and have been playing around with it.  It's a beautiful note, very honeyed and sweet but a bit difficult to work with since it's so easy to lose the quintessential quality of it.  I wondered how a tincture would be so I picked some blossoms and left them to dry for a day or two before I submerged them in 190 proof vodka.  After a few days I strained it out and replaced the blossoms.  It's now on it's third infusion.  I shake it daily and dab a bit on my wrist.  At first it's grassy and more like hay but dries down more like the scented June air.

Chocolate mint extract filtering.

In my community garden plot I have a patch of chocolate mint that's out of this world.  I've used it in the past to make tea and was pleased but not as fanatical about it is as I've been since last summer when I made some chocolate mint vodka out of it.  The chocolate really comes through when it's macerated.  I've been conjuring cocktails (along with the rest of the civilized world) the past couple of years but I don't even mix this with anything else.  It's so good just on it's own.  I wondered if I could make an extract of it to flavor other things, like seltzer or ice cream.  I chopped up a bunch very fine and put it in a jar and covered it with 190 proof alcohol.  It very quickly turned bright green.  I shook it daily and yesterday strained off the emerald green liquid and used it to make chocolate mint seltzer.  It's delicious but I'm not satisfied so I picked more mint last night and have added it to the extract - a double maceration.

Jasmine blossoms macerating.

Now my interest is piqued and I've been exploring some other materials to tincture.  Dried jasmine blossoms have yielded a surprising result, more like cigarette burning than the indolic and intoxicating fragrance I expected.  I've also been playing around with tea.  I had some peach flavored black tea in the house and started with that.  It's made the most exquisite elixir, I want to slather myself in it.  A recent trip to the tea store and I now have Lapsang Souchong, Jasmine and Russian Caravan soaking.

              Basically all you do is make sure you have clean jars and good strong vodka (190 proof is best).  Fresh plant material is best dried a day or two so that there is less water involved in your creation.  Chop herbs finely and put in the jar and pour in just enough alcohol to cover.  Make sure that everything is submerged in alcohol or you run the risk of spoilage and ruining your experiment.  Shake the jars daily.  You can double the maceration if you're so inclined.  As always keep good notes so if you create something heavenly you can create it again. Good luck!

Berkeley in Bloom

  

I'm just back in town from a wonderful weekend in Berkeley, CA where I attended a natural perfume workshop with the extremely talented Mandy Aftel.  The whole fragrance experience began for me on the first day of my trip spent wandering the streets of North Berkeley.  Everywhere I turned I was astonished by fragrant blooms.  Thick brackets of jasmine hung thickly all over the neighborhood, and roses the size of cabbages wafted their aromas on the breeze.
  

Berkeley Rose Garden

I discovered the Berkeley Rose Garden, perched high on a hill with an incredible view of the Bay and Golden Gate Bridge.  It was a literal amphitheater of roses.  I was very fortunate to visit the area during peak rose season.  Every rose smell differently and it was a wonderful way to prepare my nose for my upcoming workshop in perfumery.

 

 

A Rave Review!

I'm so thrilled to share this lovely review from Trish at Scent Hive for my Garden Walk perfume.  Trish has been kind and generous with her words and I'm thrilled to bits.

Garden Walk #1 is a perfume commissioned by Jessica Warren from Brownstone Brooklyn Garden District.  The fragrance was inspired by the flowers in the group's 13th Annual Garden Walk. The tour included 15 private gardens as well as several vibrant community gardens in the historical district of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. 

Earthy notes such as orris root, ambrette and hay represent the fertile soil of these gardens, floral middle notes such as tuberose and neroli round it out and it ends with top notes of petitgrain and elemi. Even the bees are represented in this formula with the addition of honey absolute.

The perfume is $45 for 20 ml, or a sample vial for $3, and can be purchased on my website at www.herbalalchemy.net or my Etsy store.

Nettles: A Spring Tonic

The Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) is a common herbaceous plant native to Europe, Asia, northern Africa and North America. It is known for it's sting which is caused by it's many hairs containing several chemicals.  When touched the hairs break off and act as a needle injecting acetylcholine, histamine, 5-HT or seratonin which cause a painful sting or paresthesia.  A folk remedy for rheumatism is to flog oneself with nettles (also called urtication) producing reddness and irritation.

My interest in it is for it's rich vitamin and mineral content.  Made into a tea or infusion it makes a delicious tonic.  After a long winter the high mineral content makes them an excellent remedy for anaemia.  Their high vitamin C content makes the iron they contain easily absorbable.  Nettles also increase uric acid excretion which explains why they are a valuable remedy for arthritis and gout.

Nettles also lower blood sugar levels, encourage the flow of breast milk, are a great astringent (so stop internal bleeding) and are useful for treating eczema.  It's histamine content make it an effective treatment for hay fever.  It is also said that a nettle hair rinse can eliminate dandruff, make the hair more glossy and possibly arrest hair loss.

The blood invigorating properties of this common herb make it an essential component of my transition from winter to the warmer and more active seasons.  I start infusing the herb early in the spring to reinvigorate myself.  Infusions are different from teas in that they steep far longer and are therefore more potent.  Every night before I go to bed I put a handful of dried nettles (I buy them by the pound) in a clean 24 ounce jar and pour boiling water over them.  Loosely cover the jar (if you tighten it it will be difficult to open in the morning) and leave out on the counter.  In the morning I strain the herbs from the infusion.  I also squeeze as much liquor from the herbs as possible.  You can drink them cool but I prefer to gently warm them on the stovetop.  Drink a third of the infusion three times per day.  I keep the infusion in the refrigerator during the day to retard spoilage.  I've added a few other herbs to my brew, some for flavor and some for some other conditions I'm working on.  You can add some peppermint or lemon balm to make it a bit more refreshing.  I've added chamomile to mine since I'm attempting to de-stress my sometimes frazzled urban nerves.  I might add that the spent herbs make excellent compost!

I should add that this is a regimen I do for myself every spring.  Please be responsible and always use caution when self-medicating (standard disclaimer and all that).

Be healthy and enjoy the spring!