Denmark and India are two very different countries. In fact, I am hard pressed to imagine two countries with less in common. This is probably why, being half Danish and half Indian, I tend to notice the very few occasions when they share something. On a recent trip to India, in the garden of the house that used to belong to my grandparents, I was enchanted to see a whole wall covered with fragrant sweet pea flowers. I was enchanted not only because of their wonderful colors and fragrance, but also because as a child spending summers in Denmark, my most vivid fragrance recollection is that of sweet peas as well. They grew profusely in my Danish grandparents' garden and thrive in the mild Danish summer climate, while limiting their life span in India to the (very) early spring before the summer heat sets in.
The warm round floral tones of sweet peas in the sun remains one of my favorite fragrances, and so I had high hopes for Diptyque's Pois de Senteur (Sweet Pea) candle…
During our recent cold spell and rain-storms here in the Northeast, I felt a craving for a rich, comforting scent to bring some depth, light and warmth into my surroundings. I wandered around sniffing my half burnt candles trying to decide which to light, but nothing quite seemed to resonate. My all-time favorite blustery weather candle, Mure Sauvage by L'Artisan, was all finished, and I was about to give up my search when I came across an unopened box — African Lily by Red Flower. 
An archipelago is a chain of islands. A monogram is a single decorative letter, an initial. Here at Now Smell This, we all know what candles are: “hunks of perfumed wax with embedded wicks in extravagant containers that produce: scented air, warm light, and, in extreme cases, heavy debt or bankruptcy.” 
Continuing with the spring cleaning theme of my last review (
In honor of it finally being spring (hooray!), I decided to devote some space to the scented cleaning products that are easily available in the local supermarket. Generally, I have a horror of the scented candle displays in the supermarket aisles, having learned early on that the so-called vanilla candles smelled suspiciously similar to the gardenia candles, which were in turn not much different than the lilac candles, and I checked out entirely when it came to cotton candy scented products. But of late there has been a trend towards ‘botanic essences’ and ‘aromatherapy’ even in cleaning products and my curiosity got the better of me.