News — nothing artificial

When I first starting making perfume from fallen redwoods and rescuing from wood piles,  I began with the bark- possibly one of the most fragrant giving parts of the tree. When I moved on to distilling heart and sapwood I realized what an insult to the woods it would be to call that alone a redwood smell.  We are so used to looking at one thing, like a redwood, and considering it alone. Isolated. This is redwood smell. But the redwoods are a universe. Not just from trees to tree. The mosses, the berries, the dirt,

On October 2, 2021 it was a balmy 90 degrees in Los Angeles. Early on in guava season the first fruits picked were smelling so beautifully. People were going to the beach, sunbathing, surfing, roller skating. It was feeling like endless summer. Just two days later on October 4th, as the sky began to open up to a kind of rain that feels like joy incarnate, the kind that almost evaporates on the hot pavement. In LA where we have around 300 sunny days a year the first big rain can be very exciting but none as exciting as this...