Verdant Hollow

Verdant is green and growing. A hollow is a sheltered depression in the ground, the fold where water gathers and the air stays cool. Neptune is water and mist, dissolution, the thing that is there but will not hold a shape. The damp green cleft where a forest keeps its moisture.

Cypress leads, and it took a quarter of the blend before it would. At the dose the formula first called for it was simply inaudible, buried under juniper. At forty six drops it came forward and took the lead, outlining the sweetness of the balsam fir behind it. Juniper berry runs dry and green underneath. The apothecary edge is small on purpose: four drops of eucalyptus, three of Dalmatian sage, two of rosemary. At those counts they give the blend a herbal cut without turning it into a herb garden, which is exactly what happened the first time they went higher.

The only blend in the line with no resin dilution in it at all. Poured by hand in Calumet into 7 ml black glass. Beeswax, tallow and jojoba have different melt points, which gives the balm its three-phase slow release.