April Shower Scents – for any kind of spring weather!

Lately we’ve had all possible spring weather, from beautiful bright days to downpours and even hail storms thrown in. While we await true spring laying ball for several days in a row, instead of cursing any rain showers, we’ll be wearing rain-scented fragrances and embracing the weather while we can!

‘It is certain that the best soil smells like a fine unguent… It is the odour often recognised at sunset… at the place where the ends of the rainbow meet the earth, or when rain has soaked the ground after a long drought. Then it is that the earth exhales her own divine breath, received from the sun, and of incomparable sweetness.’ Pliny the Elder, Natural History, AD 77

Petrichor is the term given to that unique scent following a rain shower on parched earth – when the world seems breathe a sigh of relief, and we, unconsciously perhaps, breathe in a little more deeply, savouring its so-pleasurable smells.

Some people mistakenly assume the word alludes to smell of rain itself, but they are mistaken. It’s in the moment raindrops kiss the arid land the magic happens. Rainwater releases micro-organisms called geosmins hidden in the earth, mixed with the smell of plant oils and ozone itself: that’s petrichor.