54 thoughts on “Narcissus: CB I Hate Perfumes Rare Flowers Series”

1. Yay daffies! I’m not much of a gardener, but every spring I can rely on the daffodils to make their appearance. My daughter was born in winter, and when the daffodils appeared a month later my mum took a picture of us with them. Beautiful happy golden flowers.
   I follow by email. 🙂

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2. There probably isn’t a fragrant narcissus around that I don’t have happy memories of. I grew up in the Deep South where the exquisitely fragrant tazetta narcissi flourished and perfumed the spring. Later, in upstate New York, paperwhites helped me tolerate the grim winters, and the last of the bulbs to bloom in spring was the pristinely beautiful and lily-scented poet’s narcissus. Now, in New Mexico, I grow a happy assortment of fragrant types, and relish them for their delicate beauty as well as their perfume. Some of the loveliest scents among flowers are found in narcissi, and I am intensely interested by your comments about hay, poison, and urine. What is narcotic and lovely in the flowers may be less pleasant when distilled down to this extent. But I’m dying to try these. Please enter me, and Ai follow by email.

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3. Well, Portia, I am a complete Luddite and have a dreadful memory so I’m not sure how exactly I follow you, except that I get regular emails! To be honest I am amazed that I managed to get myself a gravatar and don’t expect to ever be able to repeat such a feat!

   Back to the important subject: I love narcissus. To me it smells of spring but also carries with it wisps of melancholy. I think I must have sad associations with the perfume but they have almost faded and just left a little heartache when I breathe in the perfume. But I still adore it. I am even sadder that I can not have a vase or pot of these little darlings in the house as one of my feline darlings would eat them So, scenting myself is the only way to go.

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4. I used to have a pen pal who loved daffodils, it was in her username, pictures, art drawings everything. I ended up having a crush on her, so I guess that would be my most memorable daffodil.
   I follow by email and tweeted, ty

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5. by email. daffodils are a sign of spring ! they grow under my window.

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6. I do follow via email.
   As for the daffs, they do make me smile and at the moment I always have a little jar (not a vase, doesn’t suit them to be in a proper vase, I think) full of the little yellow fellows.

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7. Follow by email: edited for privacy

   When i was little, i had these flowers planted in my parents yard, they remind me of my childhood!

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8. Hi Portia –

   I follow by email. So last fall I put in a lot of hard labor planting about 200 daffodils in pots, around a new tree and in flower beds around my house. I planted a few different kinds with various heights, blooms sizes and colors. I’m really excited to see them, but it may be a few more weeks. Here in New England we are just now beginning to see signs of spring after a difficult winter. There is still snow in my yard and the ground is just now thawing out. So I’m waiting IMPATIENTLY for my daffodils to come up… I can’t wait to see and smell them!!

   -Lauren

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9. DNEM – just wanted to stop by and add my applause for this line of CBIHPs. Just gorgeous!!!

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   • YOU are just gorgeous. What a great idea to bring these extremely rare and beautiful naturals to the fragrance aficionados attention. I feel blessed to have been able to smell them.
     Portia xx

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10. Daffodil, narcissus, jonquil, tazetta, paperwhites…there are more than 50 Narcissus species!!!
    I adore the look of trumpets and the creamy indolic scent of paperwhites! My Narcissus fume favorite so far is Tom Ford’s Jonquil de Nuit, though cleaner and lighter than I wish a Narcissus fragrance to be!
    I follow by email and on FB!
    Thanks for the giveway! Love ❤

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11. I’m mildly obsessed with daffodils, especially the sight of them growing in a field. But we don’t have any wild daffodil fields in Sydney. I’ve tried to recreate it by buying and mass planting bulbs in Autumn with mixed success.

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    • I follow by email btw

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12. I follow by e-mail. I grew up in a town that had something called daffodils day and had a daffodil parade every year. 🙂

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13. Sounds intriguing! My first daffodil memory (having grown up in India where they’re uncommon) was Wordsworth’s poem! Beautiful image that still stays with me every time I come across them in nature.

    Ps I follow you via Bloglovin and twitter

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14. Hi Portia,
    So many happy memories of daffodils and narcissi of every variety. Like Patty Pong, there was a daffodil festival and parade near my childhood home too. My mother placed huge bouquets of daffodils throughout the house in early spring. There have been daffodils in every garden I’ve worked in over many years. I love the “piercing” and to me astringent smell of daffodils. It can be, like you say, somewhat “bitter” and “poisonous” but at the same time cool and fresh.
    I follow by e-mail.
    Azar xx

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15. I follow via bloglovin’ as Larie/Eye Heart It. Having grown up somewhere that doesn’t see a lot of spring flowers, daffodils were new to me when I moved to my current location. I love seeing them start to bloom and sprout up in the spring! They’re so cheerful and sunny.

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16. Hello there Portia,

    I just HAVE share an amazing (to me at any rate) experience I had with narcissus in perfume. It was Caron’s “Montaigne”, which during a typically warm Aussie springtime I’d dismissed as merely pretty; a bouquet of sweet yellow flowers… not much personality. I should precede describing what happened when I tried it again on a mild autumn day by telling you first about a visit to Ken Nakajima’s extraordinarily spiritual garden at Cowra. It’s like visiting Japan in miniature. I went there in winter – wanted to see the garden’s bare bones, with little colour adorning it. Climbing the ‘mountain’ I came upon some large rocks that invite you to sit and view the landscape below, and beyond the garden. So I did, and at my feet was a little group of yellow narcissus, harbingers of the spring that then seemed far, far away, and the only flowers blooming in the entire garden.

    Anyway, as I said, on a cool Autumn day I tried “Montaigne” again… (‘mountain’ in French)… and I was immediately transported to that miniature mountainside of Nakajima’s garden, with the air crisp and cool and scented with narcissus! It was a profound experience that I’ll never, ever forget. I’d completely missed the perfumer’s intention! I looked up the notes… just to see that I wasn’t being fanciful… and sure enough, narcissus. (I’d love to smell what you smelled, Portia; I follow by email.)

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17. I love L’Artisan’s (now long discontinued) Fleur de Narcisse for its tobacco and hay scent. This one sounds much more realistic, however… I love that your notes for Narcissus include “poisonous”–now I definitely want to try it.

    I follow by email.

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18. Never been lucky enough to be around live narcissus – but a neighbor recently brought my mom a sweet little bunch of `daffy dillies` from her yard – and I`ve dried/preserved all the blooms! 🙂 In serious need of some narcissus here!! lol!! I follow on blog, e-mail, and FB…

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19. I like to have daffodils as cut flowers when they are available. I love yellow and the way the flower looks, so they are a favorite of mine. I follow via Feedly.

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20. I love daffodils – means spring is here! In Seattle, they have Daffodil Day when they hand out about 10,000 daffodils to people downtown. Everyone -and I mean everyone – walks around carrying sprigs of yellow! It seems to unify the city (and is also quite a fun visual surprise).

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    • …and I follow by e-mail

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21. I follow via email.
    Daffodils always remind me of the first beginnings of spring. Thanks for the giveaway.

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22. Hi, I follow APJ by e-mail.
    Sadly, I’ve never smelled a narcissus in the real world, and my first “daffodils experience” was CB’s To see a flower, what a glorious perfume!
    Thank you for the draw

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23. When I was a child, my dad used to take me to pick bluebells and daffodils for my mum for mothers day (UK). There was a large wood and park near us that had carpets and carpets of both and I’ll never forget wading into that sea of blue and yellow, the blooms literally up to my little thighs. And the smell! Oh the smell. We’d go home with armfuls of blooms, covered in yellow and green – fingers would be stained for days. Marvelous.
    I follow by email. Thanks for this very generous giveaway.

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24. I remember daffodils growing in our yard when I was younger, but didn’t have a fragrance or odor from what I can remember. They are beautiful flowers. There are also daffodil like flowers that had a bigger bloom. Not sure if they were a hybrid or different flower altogether. Are narcissus and jonquil related? I haven’t a clue. Anyway I digress. I follow APJ via WordPress and email and thank you for the draw! I tweeted this contest as well .

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25. In the cloister garden we grow many varieties: whites, yellows, oranges, doubles, plain, frilled – even a beauty of a white bloom with a rich red trumpet.

    The fragrance of them is wonderful at the end of winter, as though everything woke suddenly and got busy with *everything*. I love the notes from your wearing Portia, yes, it’s all there!

    I follow by divine guidance, email and FB.

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26. I follow via email.

    I have little recall of narcissus as a flower, but I remember being entranced by the story of Echo and Narcissus as child. Ovid’s myth is such a charming explanation of two natural phenomena: the beautiful drooping flower that grows by the water’s edge, and the sound of your voice reverberating from the landscape around.

    This childhood memory was reinforced by another which made me very proud. My son was the technical director of a school play called Metamorphoses, based on Ovid’s stories. Of course, the story of Narcissus was a part of the action. He had a very tricky time mounting this part of it, as the staging required a huge swimming pool to be installed, filled and emptied for each performance. The result was very moving; the young man playing Narcissus, staring silently and fixedly into the pool, produced a flowerpot containing a single jonquil, set it reverently by the pool and slowly walked off in a doomed fashion while a girl’s voice offstage screamed. Chilling. The show won children’s theatre awards throughout California, including for technical direction, which was a mighty achievement given they were competing in the same zone as LA and Hollywood.

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27. As it is not a laughing matter here in the South, but there are many men in my family who see, smell and talk endlessly about daffodils. Me, I love how they look, smell, feel….the men? it’s all about the crappie season when the daffodils come up! Yep……I am a die hard flower and perfume junkie married to a man who loves daffodils because they signal the need to fish from sunup to sundown. So that’s my story and I ‘m stickin to it LOL…I follow you on Bloglovin and Twitter and love your posts.

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28. Long ago, I was buying flowers for a friend’s birthday. Beautiful long-stemmed roses, but with no scent -it was winter in Greece, and whether it was the variety or the hothouse, those lovely roses smelled like … nothing. On every streetcorner, it seemed, there were little pots of narcissus (paperwhites). So I bought some narcissus to put in the vase with the roses – two kinds of beauty, but only one perfume. I don’t know how he liked it. I never saw him again.

    I follow by e-mail.

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29. I love daffodils. In fact I have just bought some more for my rather barren garden. $500 /100ml is very exxy, but then getting the perfume from the flowers would be very complex. I’d love to try this. I follow you via Facebook and Twitter.

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30. When I was little and lived in Seattle, my mom planted flowers everywhere in our garden. We always had daffodils to welcome spring. Thanks for the review and the draw! (I follow via email.)

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31. when i lived in minneapolis i used to bring in square clay pots of rows of narcissus after the equinox to remind myself, regardless of the months of snow ahead- spring has arrived.

    (i follow by email)

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32. I follow by email. Daffodils always remind me of spring, because my mom planted bulbs in our front yard. They are one of the few plants she was able to cultivate successfully 🙂 Thank you for the review and draw!

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33. It’s always been one of my favourite spring flowers! I have so many lovely memories about them. My grandma used to collect many different kinds of daffodils and narcissus and I really loved sitting in the garden, looking at the sunlight shining though the gleaming petals and trying each variety for the smell… They all have slightly different scent. I can go on and on about my happy memories!(I suppose I’d better stop):)
    Thanks for the giveaway and I’m following via email.

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34. Hey Portia,

    Narcissus don’t grow here. I discovered them while living in France, and was mesmerized to finally see the flower from the legend. Such a perfect symmetry! I was very interested in watching the work of the old school French gardeners which I was lucky enough to regularly meet on my way to the metro in Vincennes. I remember them planting the bulbs in the dead of winter, which grew to white and yellow flowers. Great narcissus memories. 🙂

    Thank’s for the giveaway. I follow you fume junkies by email.

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35. I follow by email. Daffodils are so spring-y, some of the first bulbs to come up and seeing them is always an exciting relief. I also really like growing paperwhites, I have some in my dorm room right now. I don’t think they’ll bloom this year, but the smell of the flowers is so wonderfully horsey. I think one of my favorite perfumes with a narcissus note is Le Temps d’Une Fete.

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36. I remember as a child getting a book on Greek mythology. The story of Narcissus captured my imagination immediately. I always think of the story whenever I see the flowers.

    Follow by email.

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37. I follow by email.
    My mum had the most beautiful garden all year round but spring was particularly lovely, she always had lots of wonderful spring bulbs, daffodils and narcissus included. It was always so fantastic to see such beauty after a cold miserable winter!

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38. OOOH this is giving me the lemmings; I recently conducted a CB I Hate Perfume giveaway myself! 🙂 No need to enter me into the draw but thank you for sharing the love for good perfume anyway!

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39. CB I hate perfume entry – follow by email & I was recently in Washington when it snowed and saw narcissi peeping through the snow in the National Botanic Garden. Crisp, cold, fresh snow with minute glimpses of dark green and bright yellow – not something I thought I’d see so soon after moving to Sydney last year.

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40. Hi Portia,
    This fragrance sounds fascinating. My most recent encounter with the daffies was last month. Several popped their bright yellow heads up & out of the black loam while small clumps of snow still clung to the mountainside. I embraced them and inhaled deeply the curiously sharp, almost secret scent.
    I follow via email.
    J

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41. email follower

    I have only recently (last spring) begun to appreciate some of the varieties of narcissus. Love the look–we have a circle of bright yellow daffodils around a lamppost in the front yard of the house where I grew up. Every spring after the crocuses, after the snow melted, they’d poke right up. Such a little miracle! They’re long-lasting and cheery and we’d cut one or two to put in vases. But no scent.

    Other varieties of jonquil/buttercup/narcissus/daffodil have a smell I find unpleasant. Thought most had no smell or that smell. But last year I really started noticing all the different varieties and realized there was one type, on a hillside covered in many types, whose scent I found beautiful and haunting. I loved being in that space, with the wind coming off the water blowing that green, earthy, spicy scent swirling all around me. Looking forward to enjoying it again!

    If CB can bottle that I can understand the enthusiasm!

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    • Portia,
      You intrigued me with this idea of Narcissus. I ordered L’Occitane’s Vanille & Narcisse body milk, as my beloved winter lotion ‘Ambre & Santal’ is almost gone. The new one arrived today. It opens with a blast of vanilla that fades away quickly and then the sharp Narcisse appears. The two notes blend together and linger on the skin, probably more vanilla than Narcisse on my skin. Hmmm, still intrigued, even if I’m not so enthusiastic about the vanilla right now. If I can a little Narcissus essential oil, may add it to the lotion. J

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43. Hi Portia – my beloved grandfather grew Narcissi in his conservatory – we had to walk through it to get into the main house – and I always remember the sight of the golden Winston Churchills and ethereal Silver Chimes standing to attention as we arrived. The sheer, green fragrance from flower stalls always transports me to that time. I follow APJ via Facebook and email.

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44. I adore daffodils, they are so bright and happy.

    We inherited lots of daffodils in our garden and I love seeing them emerge in spring. I added some of the gorgeous little ones – Tete-a-tete – that flower very early.

    Also adore CBIHP.

    I follow be email and RSS feed.

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45. I thought I was alone! I now follow by email. So glad to have found your site, people just don’t appreciate my fascination with fragrance. I’d rather perfume samples than dinner at a restaurant..
    Can’t grow narcissus here, too hot. But I do mail order bulbs, put them in the crisper then enjoy them growing in a pot for a short while.

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    • We do that with ours the first year too Kiola, in the crisper before putting them in the ground.
      Welcome to the APJ family. I hope you have a long and happy stay here. You are not alone, we span the globe and we are happy to have a new buddy.
      Portia xx

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46. I follow by email. I don’t have much experience with the traditional spring bulb flowers; here in Florida it’s too hot, humid & buggy for the bulbs to survive long in the ground. We do best with Amaryllis and Easter Lillies. That said, my all-time favorite perfume, Vol de Nuit, lists Narcissus in the notes, and I always imagine it adds to the dark, mysterious air of that fragrance. Thanks for the draw.

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47. I love daffodils, they remind me of spring and Easter. My father, who is the most amazing gardner, and my mother both love the scent as do I. They have collected a large assortment o f all of these amazing daffodils that I had never seen before. Some are the traditional yellow, while others are a lovely pink and other colors, whites, some have rippled modern looking cool
    stamens and they all smell wonderfully divine. This is season for them to start blooming where I live and I love finding at local farmer’s markets so I can have them not only beautify my home but also make my entire home smell heavenly. A fragrance that contains narcissus is Narcisse Noir Caron for women, difficult to find this days, but a very pretty one. I love Narcissus essential oil, and for as fragrant as the blooms are I’m very surprised by how pricey the oil is. It must take many blooms to gather the delicious scent. I would love to win anything from APJ and the lovely, Portia! Thanks for the invite to participate, Jamie Ferrari or @JKFerrari also aromaworks and all other variations of aromaworks2014, etc.

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