From The Tiny Book of Tiny Pleasures:
They say hearing is the last sense we lose before we shuffle off this mortal coil, but I’ve often wondered if it might instead be scent. Or maybe scent just has the most power to help us recall our personal histories. I appreciate all the scents mentioned above: rosemary, peppermint, lemon, eucalyptus, thyme, jasmine, and lavender.
I recently had to restock some of my essential oils before they ran out; among them, lemon grass, lime, and spearmint.
I picked these three specifically to show because they are some of the ones I bought at Wild Earth Herbs, which has been closed since sometime in 2005. The scents are just as potent and wonderful in the bottle as ever. My replacements are from a different dealer, of course. I probably won’t use these in blends, but will use them individually in a diffuser so we can share a fragrant goodbye.
I wasn’t surprised by how lovely they still smell. The Titanic sank in 1912. On board was a chemist with vials of essential oils he planned to use to create fragrances. He survived the disaster, but his oils were lost. In 1985, on one of the expeditions to the sunken ship, his case was found and brought to the surface. After 73 years, the oils still held their scent. I was able to smell them at an exhibit of Titanic artifacts in 2002, ninety years after they landed on the ocean floor.
Amazing.