Things have felt especially sensory-spiked the past week — could be that it’s finally started raining again. That loamy, damp spring smell is always a bit of a high in and of itself. Incidentally, Demeter has a fragrance called “Wet Garden” that almost kinda approximates it (unfortunately the scent evaporates way too quickly, as is the case with most of their stuff).

You know, at some point way back I remember hearing that they had this full-on fragrance laboratory in Manhattan, filled with all sorts of the really obscure scents (like Funeral Home, Bacon, Condensed Milk, and Chalk), but I have an idea I’ve conjured this resplendent mental image of it that’s way out of line with reality. Like you have to utter a secret password to be granted access and then it’s a whole subterranean maze of foggy corridors and floor-to-ceiling shelves full of colored glass bottles, scents of every description all in alphabetical order.

Spent the morning holed up in the upper echelons of the UT library with a smuggled mega-cup of JP’s ultra-octane latté. Looking for pix/info on the Limbourg Brothers’ illuminated calendars as I’ve been kinda sorta noodling with the idea of taking a stab at a modern take on them.