Summer Scents
Summer. What’s not to love? The salt, sand and sun-bleached, lazy days to soak it all in. Yet not everyone experiences summer that way. For some, summer inflames, is drying and brings irritability, impatience and sunburn. Then there’s the lethargy...
Pure essential oils can help set you up for a summer of sensual delights. This soothing list of summer scents will help cool you off and energise, nourish and prepare for you for the weeks ahead.
The essentials
Essential oils are pure essences extracted from different parts of fruits, trees, flowers and stems. Pure essential oils are those that have no additives at all — no fillers, extenders, synthetic materials... the only ingredient is the essential oil. For your health, it’s important to avoid cheap, synthetic oils and look for wild-harvested or certified-organic essential oils, as these contain no petrochemical-derived compounds or botanical substitutes.
For example, according to David Crow of essential oil company Floracopeia, it takes “1,400,000 handpicked rose blossoms to produce a litre of rose essential oil”. Imagine. He says, “A single ounce of this oil contains the essence of 40,000 rose blossoms. Sixty-seven roses give only one drop of essential oil.” This is why pure rose oil is so expensive.
Essential oils was first commercialised in the 1920s, when French chemist René- Maurice Gattefosse applied lavender oil to his
