Marie Kondo, the author of the best-selling book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” suggests that only items that spark joy should be kept around the house. Of course, Kondo’s “spark joy” philosophy is more nuanced as she applies it to various aspects of cleaning and decluttering, but the idea of surrounding oneself with objects that are meaningful and special makes perfect sense. It can also be applied successfully to selecting a perfume.

Whenever I’m asked by friends and readers for recommendations, instead of listing fragrances, I try to determine what scents make them feel good. Or, to use Kondo’s phrase, what perfumes spark joy for them. One such composition for me is Serge Lutens’s Iris Silver Mist. It’s a cool, polished fragrance based around the scent of iris root, and when I wear it, I feel as if I’ve stepped into a secret garden filled with pearly light and the soft rustle of leaves.

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Bitterness is usually to be avoided. We take easily to sweet flavors and scents, but it takes time to get used to the bitter ones. Yet, I find them most intriguing. One of the first things I planted in my garden was a black currant bush. I love the pungent tartness of black currants, but even more so the verdant bitterness of its leaves and buds. Its stems also have a wonderful scent that lingers on fingers. It’s the fragrance of summer at its most indolent.

Do you like bitter notes?

Scent Diary is a place to write your observations about the scents around you. Whether you write down 1 recollection or 10 matters less than simply reminding yourself to smell. You can add as many comments as you wish. You can comment today or over the course of the week; this thread will always be open. Of course, do share what perfume you’re wearing or what particularly good scented products you’ve discovered.

While looking through my articles, I found this article that I wrote a few years ago but that still remains popular and often-read: A to Z Tips for Enjoyable, Affordable and Rewarding Perfume Hobby. If you have any tips to add, I’d love to hear them.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

This year I once again couldn’t go to Ukraine. I miss my family, but I also miss our garden in Bereh. Over the years that I have been visiting my grandmother, I became a gardener in my own right, making my planting arrangements and tending to flowers. For my grandmother, the garden was a source of sustenance and a place of safety, and I too began to see it as our small paradise. Even when the news were dire, working in the garden calmed me and restored my spirit.

Being away from Bereh, I longed for such a place. In my apartment, there is a small balcony, but I also share a couple of flower beds in front of the building with others in the neighborhood. Since nobody wanted to take care of them, I decided to plant the flowers and herbs that evoked Ukraine for me. I bought seeds for tagettes, sweet peas, hollyhocks, marigolds, cosmos, nigella, basil, thyme and mint. I planted lovage and anemones, wild strawberries and roses. The space was too small for everything I wanted to include, but I tried anyway.

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I’m participating in the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year, and I hope to meet some of you there. I will be in conversation with the Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma about loss, inheritance and the impact of war on families.

Victoria Belim & Emmanuel Iduma: Lost Legacies, Hidden Histories
Tue 15 Aug 13:30 – 14:30 Baillie Gifford Sculpture Court
Baillie Gifford Sculpture Court
You can attend in person or watch online by following this link.

Victoria Belim & Emmanuel Iduma: Lost Legacies, Hidden Histories
Authors Victoria Belim and Emmanuel Iduma share their personal, moving experiences, discussing the interplay between global forces and personal histories. They have a dogged shared commitment to unearthing the past – Belim in The Rooster House, tying family secrets to Ukraine’s hidden history; and Iduma in I Am Still With You, part-memoir, part-political reckoning tracing his roots amongst those displaced by the Nigerian Civil War. Chaired by Marjorie Lotfi.

Watch online
Available live, then on-demand until 00:00 on Saturday 30 September.

I visited Edinburgh once before, but I still don’t know the city well. If you have any recommendations on what to visit and see, I would be grateful.

The tonka bean, one of my favorite ingredients looks unprepossessing—a shriveled black pod covered with suspicious white bloom. However, its scent of toasted almonds, amarena cherries, sun warmed hay and vanilla custard is one of the luscious in a perfumer’s palette. What’s more, the tonka bean was responsible for a revolution in modern perfumery.

Tonka beans, the seeds of the Dipteryx Odorata tree native to South America, contain a component called coumarin. It’s present in many herbs and plants, including lavender, figs, and cherry leaves, but tonka beans are so rich in this aromatic that it crystallizes to the surface of their skin. Indeed, the very name coumarin comes from a French word for the tonka bean, coumarou. Coumarin was first isolated from tonka beans in the 1820s, and in 1882 it became the first synthetic material to be used in a perfume. To create a fantasy accord inspired by ferns, perfumer Paul Parquet added coumarin to the classical eau de cologne blend of citrus, lavender and geranium. Notes of amber, musk and oakmoss filled in the rest of the composition and Houbigant’s Fougère Royale was born. Along with it, came a new family of fragrances called fougère, which in French meant “fern.”

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