It’s no surprise that the most popular soaps Sue and I make are fragranced with lavender essential oil. The eye-popping purple flowers with their alluring fragrance have been stimulating people's senses for thousands of years.
The Egyptians used the plant and its by-products for mummification and as an antiseptic to heal wounds. Lavender is a natural perfume — ancient peoples used it on their bodies, in their hair and bathwater, and cooked with it. I’ve personally used lavender as an accent flavor on chicken and pork. You can put lavender in lemonade for the kids, and cocktails for the adults, or use it as potpourri and stick it in your sock draw.
Popular all over the world lavender in California is harvested from June to August and celebrated with festivals — did someone say lavender festival!? After more than a year of on-again, off-again Covid lock-downs what better way to bust out of the Covid doldrums than an outdoor festival in a peaceful setting surrounded by beauty. None that I can think of. In early July I took a 10-hour road trip from my home in Southern California (SoCal) to Northern California (NoCal). My festival of choice was at Bee’s N Blooms’ Lavender Farm in Santa Rosa, via the scenic route a 10-hour drive versus a 6-hour direct route drive.
I made my way from the 405 freeway made infamous by O.J. Simpson’s slow-speed chase. From the 405 I took the 101 freeway through Santa Barbara. Blue beaches to my left, rolling hills and vineyards to my right listening to NPR — yup I’m a nerd. From there I meandered my way to historic route 1 Pacific Coast Highway — it’s a beautiful drive. If you’ve never driven it and get the chance to, do it!

Lavender is a worldwide phenom. From sunny California to Golgotha the city where Jesus was crucified. Referenced in the Bible as spikenard or nard, Mary anointed Jesus’s feet with an ointment of spikenard/nard. Judas chastised Mary for wasting it on Jesus’s feet. Judas told Mary she should sell the expensive perfume and give the money to the poor but Jesus shut that down he instructed Mary not to sell it but to save it for his burial which she did: John 12:1 -11 (NIV).
Lavender is as universal as wheat. No matter where you go in the world people figure out how to use it. Today fragrance engineers concoct everything we smell — from cosmetics to processed foods and they have expertly replicated the smell of lavender. Why you ask would they not use the real thing when the real thing is plentiful? Extracting fragrance from a plant is an art form. There is no room for art, nuance, and care in mass production. Real lavender products, just like in Jesus’ day are expensive, and natural extraction can’t garner massive profits. Massive profits are begotten by way of cheap labor and with little regard for the toxins introduced into the human body and environment, which is why you should buy Amore soap (shameless plug!).
Sue and I use a steamed distilled lavender essential oil called lavender 40/42. It’s 100% natural and smells fantastic in soaps. Some of our customers shower with one bar and keep one specifically to fragrance their dresser drawers, just like French women of the Renaissance did.
Morro Bay
I only have one thing to say about Morro Bay . . . I’ll be back! What a beautiful place. I had no time to stop and explore, a mistake I will not repeat. Honestly I’m embarrassed to admit I’d never heard of it. In my defense I’m not from California though I’ve lived here almost 2 decades. By nature I’m a homebody worker-bee. By the time of this trip I hadn’t pulled myself away from the grindstone long enough to discover anything outside of SoCal — a thing I’ve been working on with my awesome career/life coach Dara Kaplan which is the other reason I took this trip. Dara has helped me see the value in time-off /vacations which I had considered frivolous. I said to her, I don’t want to spend weeks away from home sitting by a pool drinking frilly drinks! She said to me . . . you don’t have to! Vacation/time-off can be anything you want it to be; to which I said, you mean like a meditative drive up the coast site-seeing, and walking through fields of lavender, a plant used in aromatherapy to help people relax; to which Dara said yah because she is too professional to say duh!
Before Sue and I started making soap I knew nothing about lavender and all of its uses. I’ve mentioned lavender lemonade, and lavender cocktails but you can also make tea with it. People drink lavender tea to calm their nerves and to help them sleep. It’s super easy to make just be sure the lavender you use is culinary grade. Culinary-grade edible flowers are not treated with pesticides.
Lavender Tea recipe:
Ingredients :
- 1 tbs. culinary grade dried lavender buds
- 1 cups hot water
- 1/2 teaspoon honey or agave
Boil water, add lavender buds to a tea strainer. Fill a mug with the hot water and steep the lavender buds for 5 minutes, add honey or agave, enjoy.
San Simeon
Thirty minutes north of Morro Bay is San Simeon. Morro Bay was beautiful, but Jesus take the wheel San Simeon! I realize I’ve referenced Jesus twice now in this blog which is a lot of Jesus considering I’m not religious, but I do like exclaiming “Jesus take the wheel!” It’s better than the alternative — oh boy! Or gee wiz! But I digress . . . San Simeon y’all . . . so pretty. I was lucky enough to be there on a clear day. The sun was sparkling on the water. Gentle waves broke on the beach creating a bright white surf. The water was different shades of blue, turquoise, and teal, and the mountains of Big Sir were on the horizon.
Like I said I was having a wonderful day when all of a sudden the driver in front of me slammed on his brakes! I thought oh-no accident. Did a lookie-lou like me transfixed by the scenery me rear-end someone? After breaking the driver whipped his car over to the shoulder. The on-coming car in the opposite lane did the same thing, whipped over to the shoulder. What — is — happening I thought!? Everybody is pulling over, there are several cars on the shoulder — zebras!
I’m halfway through my trip when I stumble across what will be one of the defining moments of the journey . . . Zebras! Zebras grazing on the side of the road in central California . . . how crazy is that!? Turns out if you know anything about San Simeon, grazing herds of zebras are as normal as starry-eyed tourists wondering the beaches taking selfies. Following suit I hit my brakes. I whipped my car over to the shoulder and jumped out to join the excited people marveling at the African mammals and snapping pics. Zebras . . . absolutely fantastic.
A friend would later tell me that these zebras were once a part of the Hearst estate. Know as Hearst Castle it’s now a museum. The zebras and other animals not native to California, or even North America were brought here by the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, grandfather of the notorious Pattie Hearst, as a part of his private zoo. At one time Hearst’s zoo had camels, African and Asian antelope, kangaroos, giraffes, grizzly bears, chimpanzees, leopards, tigers, and macaws. Money problems led to the demise of the private zoo. Hearst was forced to sell most of the animals but the zebras remained and have been part of the landscape for decades.
Later, when situated in my hotel room for the evening I called my husband and told him about the zebras. He asked if I had been drinking — how dare you I thought! Not only do I rarely drink I dang sure don’t drink and drive. Mother’s Against Drunk Driving disabused me of that notion back in high school. And then there was the former drug addict ex-prisoner my high school brought in to speak to the student body. The guy was scary. He wore an awful polyester suit, and he said the f-word . . . at school! You could have heard a pin drop in that gym after that man swore. We kids — squirmy chatter boxes excited to be out of class and in an assembly froze when he said it. Our teachers leaning on the gym walls shifted uncomfortable from foot to foot and nervously looking at each other. The drug-addict ex-con hired to scar us straight told us that if we used drugs and alcohol we were going to become addicts and die, or go to jail like him, or end up living in van down by the river. Just kidding about living in van down by the river, that’s a line from a Saturday Night Live skit with Chris Farley playing a character similar to the guy my high school hired but nowhere near as scary. The Chris Farley character — Matt Foally repeatedly told two pot smoking kids played by Christina Applegate and David Spade that their post smoking ways would ruin their lives and they’d end up “living in a van, down by the river!” The skit is an SNL classic. If you haven’t seen it check the video below. I’m sure the administrators from my high school heard from angry parents that night, and though I don’t advocate teaching via fear, the drug addict ex-con scare me straight before I could go crooked, not that I would have — I am my friends designated driver to this day.
Women who did laundry for a living in medieval times and during the French Renaissance were called lavenders because they washed clothes in lavender and laid them to dry on lavender bushes. The Romans used lavender oil in soap just like us! Lavender is a big part of our business, how could I not partake in at least one of events celebrating the plant at the peak of its glory.
Big Sur
After driving for hours I entered Big Sur. The winding mountain sea coast roads with hair pin turns and blind spots require hands at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock on the steering wheel. Driving though the splendor makes it hard to concentre on the road but you better! A driving error here can be your last error on earth, which leads to my one complaint about Big Sur . . . not enough places to pull over and enjoy the views. There is so much to look at and see! Big Sur is added to my list of I’m coming back but I’m tired now. It’s been a long day on the road and time for me to end my scenic tour, hit the main roads and get to my hotel for the night, lavender picking is 10 AM the following morning.
It’s believed European settlers brought lavender to North America. I found a great web site about the origins of it in America — the Pacific North West to be exact. A man by the name of L.J. Wyckoff began cultivating Lavender during the Depression growing it for commercial purposes. Washington State seems to be a Mecca of lavender in the United States, in particular Sequim Washington — home of Mike and Natalie from the TV show “90 Day Fiancé” (I’m Team Mike). Sequim-Dungeness is know as the Lavender Capital of North America.
Hotel soap is the worst! Of course I packed Amore soap for the trip — our popular lavender bar. The shea butter, mango butter, and cocoa butter add to the already nourishing moisturizing properties of the organic extra virgin olive oil, organic cold pressed castor oil and and steam refined non-GMO coconut oil in our signature soaps. And that’s not all, our signature soaps have agave in them. Agave is a natural anti-inflammatory and antiseptic which is good for acne and blemishes. We also add a pinch of tussah silk, an environmentally friendly wild silk made from tussah silk worms who eat juniper leaves and oak and is not produced controlled environment. The silk adds shine and gives the bars an added silky feeling as well as helps create a nice lather.
One of our regular customers claims our soap has cleared her acne like no other product, which at first sounded curious to me but it makes sense. Five — count them — five of the ingredients in our signature soaps are known to be antibacterial and anti-inflammatory. Both bacteria and skin inflammation cause acne. And let’s not forget our soaps are chemical free, not concocted by chemical engineers in lab coats, manufactured by people barely making a living wage soon to be replaced by robots, or have their jobs shipped out of the country. But we are talking about lavender — did you know that Both Queen Elizabeth (the first one) and Queen Victoria loved lavender? Queen Elizabeth required fresh lavender at the royal table and throughout her rooms. Queen Victoria adorned her gardens with lavender making the plant popular in gardens all over London.
Wanting to see how the other half lives, I lowered my standards and washed my hands with the hotels little bar of soap/detergent (most mass produced “soaps” don’t meet the FDA definition of soap and are NOT in fact soap; they are detergents). Admittedly the hotels soap/detergent didn’t incinerate my skin but the experience wasn’t pleasant, and it’s not remotely comparable to our natural skin love soap. Also missing from the hotel soap/detergent was a soothing natural aroma. The hotel bar was made with synthetic fragrance as are all big brand commercial soap/detergents. I say boo to that! The wrapper read compliments of — insert hotel name. Compliments!? Here’s a chemical based synthetic cleaning agent that will dry your skin … our complements — you’re welcome!?
Lavender Fest!
When you register for Bee’s N Blooms lavender picking they give you a time slot and I was running late. Traffic on California freeways never disappoints. I was sweating to get there. Finally I turn off a nondescript road and BEHOLD, rings of lavender lay before me.
The fragrant purple flowers were planted in a circle with a luscious grassy knoll in the middle. To the right, long rows of the plant basked in the mid-morning sun. I was given garden shears and directed to the fields which were abuzz with pollinating bees. You’d think there’d be shrieking and swatting but the good people at Bee’s N Blooms educated the visitors, allaying fears, so that there was peaceful coexistence between us and bees which were ever-present as I harvested my bounty. I strolled through the fragrant fields, absorbed the serenity, and took pictures. If I could have I would have left with a trunk full of lavender but that wasn’t an option. I did buy 10 live plants, some of which are thriving in my backyard. Some have not survived my lack of gardening skills. The lavender I did pick will be in our products soon so stay tuned. Thank you to the kind people at Bee N Blooms I had a wonderful time. Your organic farm is beautiful, I’ll be back.