The Forest in Bloom: Early Harvests and First Scents

Spring doesn’t wait. It comes in all at once — viburnum in full bloom overnight, lilacs nodding heavy on the stem just days later. Each petal and tip opens briefly, asking to be noticed. And so I gather, quietly, while the forest and garden unfold.

This season, I’ve been enfleuraging viburnum and lilac — slow work, but rich. Viburnum has a creamy, light scent, almost like butter and air. Lilac is sharper, greener, with a bite of sweetness if you catch it at just the right hour. I’ve worked with dark purple, pale lavender, and the delicate double-petaled whites. Each one carries its own voice into the pomade.

While the blossoms have been soft, the evergreens have offered something firmer — something to ground the floral flight. I’ve been harvesting fresh tips from Douglas fir, grand fir, ponderosa pine, western red cedar, and incense cedar. The young growth is bright green, tender, and full of resin. I let the tips dry overnight on paper-lined tables before tucking them into oil or alcohol. Douglas fir offers citrus and forest floor. Cedar tips smell like rain on wood.

There’s something deeply satisfying about this balance — flower and tree, delicate and resinous, spring and evergreen. I’ve also begun tincturing: lilac in alcohol, which draws out a greener, sharper edge than enfleurage, and Douglas fir for its lemony sparkle. A few jars are steeping with forest resins too — small pieces gathered from ponderosa, coastal redwood, and grand fir. These are quiet scents, deeper and slower to reveal.

All of it — oil, tincture, enfleurage — is becoming the foundation for what I’ll create next. Scents that speak of place. Of the low mist on Tiger Mountain and the scent of fresh bark warmed by sun. None of it is rushed. The forest gives what it will, and I listen.

More to come.