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Rosa damascena trigintipetala
The pink shrub roses used to make rose oil and rose absolute for perfumery are from two main varieties, the Centifolia rose, and the Damask rose, or Rosa damascena trigintipetala. These grow in Bulgaria, Turkey and Morocco, and I was lucky enough to visit the rose growing areas in El Kelaa des M’Gouna, Morocco, in 1997. There, the rose bushes are actually the side crop, used as hedges to assist and protect the wheat that is also being grown. The town of El Kelaa and nearby growing areas are part of a large oasis in the Sahara Desert. This week I had cause to look again at my journal from…
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Bath Bombs
Today I want to talk about bath bombs. I just had a bath with a Lush Twilight ’21 (yes, I know it is 2023 but the bomb only just came into my possession). It seemed like it had layers – so there is the pinky lilac outside layer, and in the middle a turquoise coloured layer and when it all dissolves the bath water is a lavender colour. But the compound that makes up the different layers, chemically, must be slightly different – because they dissolved at different rates, and rather like an apple with the core dissolving before the outer layer, the turquoise inside layer fizzed and dissolved faster…