Earthtones #3 - North Woods
by Neil Morris Fragrances

EARTH TONES #3: NORTH WOODS - Basil and heather opens this scent followed by fir, fig and cut grass middle notes. This North Woods opening is a lighter woods than many wooded scents, but it retains a very sparkling green essence. The base is cedar, oak, redwood, myrrh, labdanum, oakmoss, vetiver. This scent has a great green pine oil opening from basil mixed with myrrh and is quite a bit more green than Dark Season which is more resinous. It kind of smells like a cross between Hinoki and Knize Forest, in the opening and mid notes, but there is a dry grassy scent at the base that smells like old burlap bag or oiled canvas. The base goes more and more to this oakmoss dry finish as it wears and develops. Not bad!

This is the smell of conifer forest floors, all wet and slightly rotted and yet still full of life and earth. It's a strong juice, this, yet it wears (much like Yatagan, its dryer, Southern cousin) surprisingly close to the skin.

Sensual stuff that makes you want to frolic with fauns and pick up pine cones and do naughty things among the branches and the boughs.

Apply only if you dare.

At first spray, I felt like I'd taken a clod of Scott's potting soil and mashed it onto my arm. Earthy. Neil Morris ain't kidding when he decided to call this *Earth*tones. And then after about 30 minutes or so, it stopped smelling like a potted plant, and I could smell woods. Cypress, cedar, and just lots and lots of loamy woods, with mushrooms growing in it. And it stayed like that for maybe 3 hours or so.

Then it became a really nice spicy scent. Kind of like BPAL's Coyote, but different. Coyote smells of champa and teak wood to me. The weathered, slightly-damp teak that one finds in old sailboats.

While I was wearing North Woods, I caught a whiff of Woodland Strawberries that was still lingering on my lab coat. In comparison, North Woods is mostly cedar and other earthy woods whereas Woodland Strawberries is more cedar with sandalwood. That's what I think, anyway.