Did you know that ivy actually blooms for a few days in the year and has a wonderful thick, green, honey like, sweet, dark perfume? It is an amazingly intense fragrance, in light of the little yellow flower and it attract bees in mass. Now, the ivy around the house lost its flowers and the picture today shows you an ivy twig with the little green berries that will turn into real fruits over the next weeks.

This year, the ivy around the house bloomed all at once and was intense like I do not remember it from the past. The weather these days sure helped. We have the most amazing sunny warm days.  But soon, I am afraid, this period will be over and at the latest by then I will take the Jasmine bush inside. A few weeks later it will explode in little flowers. Here again, amazing little fragrant flowers, with so much bigger scent then themselves.Yet, in all the intensity of their fragrance, there remains something delicate about it, a simplicity and clarity.

Talking delicate clarity, yesterday, when finishing the interview that I had to write, I crossed the roads with Edmond Roudnitska again.  I mentioned in the interview that I wrote years ago Edmond  Roudnitska’s criteria on piece of paper sitting always next to me on my desk. These criteria guide me and I check every fragrance with them and I am very often disappointed about my creations in this light.

These are his criteria for “les qualités fondamentales du grand parfum: caractère, vigueur, pouvoir diffusant, délicatesse, clarté, volume, persistance.”