today’s picture shows you the view from the motel where I usually stay in 29 Palms: the Harmony Motel. It faces the hills that overlook 29 Palms. I love sitting there, on the porch, and watching the hills turning on their lights in the evening, changing colors from bright greyish brown to dark red. I tried to capture one of these moments of changing lights, the first hints of orange on the hills, the shadows starting to carve out the contours.

I love how the water colors work there and bring in another dimension.

detail of water color painting

My day today will be less creative than usual, for a Friday: I have work to get done in the factory. Next week, I will get help, and need to prepare a couple of things for these additional hands (family, kids). But there is one thing that I will do, for sure: dilute a trial that I did before leaving, a while ago. Like the water colors above, flowing out of control, and yet being guided by the painter at the same time, the trial just happened, sort of floating up in Excel. Coming back to my thinking about vanilla, I ended up with three bases that exploit three circles around vanilla: Bourbon spices, bourbon geranium, and a rough base that is a Bourbon dark patchouli tobacco combo. You get the idea?

The geranium lifts, the tobacco patchouli combo adds dark lines and the spices with a dash rose oil hold things together. I am pretty far off there from my original ideas, but who cares?

It is a game. Fun time, play time.

And if I learned a lesson then it is this: not everything that cooks in my lab needs to get onto the table. At least not tomorrow. Actually, in other fields, it’s like that , too. Painters do not sell all the things they paint. Many of them at least. so… that’s a relief in a sense. No worries there. Anyhow, time to get into the factory. Today’s job: Air du désert marocain, filling bottles. What else?