home fragrance

My obsession with fig has been well documented here. It's my favorite fruit and one of my favorite notes in personal and home fragrance, so every fig scent I find is a thrill. That's the case with Linari Malva room spray. It could have easily been an exquisite perfume, but I'm willing to take it as a home product (and I won't tell anyone if a spritz here and there lands on my person).

The fig is both a ripe fruity one and woody. It's smooth and almost creamy but uses cedar and not sandalwood, so it's a bit more dry than many familiar combination. The result is fresh and light but with enough depth to make me smile when I sniff the air, and extremely long lasting for such a product. I can still smell it over an hour after spraying.

Bottom Line: If the matching reed diffuser wasn't priced at $110 a pop I'd put one in every corner of every room in the house.

Linari Malva Room Spray ($47) is available from MiN New York (117 Crosby street) and online minnewyork.com

Image: Figs by Sandra Murray, watercolor, 2010

I've been buying Aura Cacia organic oils and the occasional body product for years now and always liked them, so when I stumbled upon their home scents I was happy to give them a try. I wanted a couple of electric air fresheners for areas I'd rather not put a reed diffuser, and the promise of aromatherapeutic scents lured me in, right with an ingredient list chock full of natural essential oils.

I chose Bergamot & Orange and Lime & Grapefruit and hurried home to plug them in. What a disappointment! While everything smells great if you shove the refills up your nose, the air fresheners have absolutely no throw and you just can't smell anything. I tried three different refills, so it's not likely a bad batch and also moved the gadgets from room to room and tested them in small closed spaces (both bathrooms). No luck and no scent. I'm sticking with reed diffusers. Thankfully the kittens have been good so far about not knocking them down, even if Giselle has been stealing reeds here and there to chase them around the house.

Bottom Line: Meh.

Aura Cacia Electric Aromatherapy Air Fresheners ($14.99, refills $6.99) are available at Whole Foods.

My home scenting adventure continues.

I was at the local L'Occitane store stocking up on my favorite hair products (yes, I know that a suspicious amount of posts starts with this sentence. What can I say? L'Occitane need to start selling their conditioner and hair mask in family size packaging), when I smelled something familiar and wonderful.

Fig.

My love for fig scents is well-documented here, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to discover the Fig Tree Leaf reed diffusers .They also come in other scents and I even got one, I think the Provencal Landscape, which I'll review when I break it open, but right now I'm all about the incredible aroma of a fig tree in the middle of summer, lush, green and heavy with fruit that is about to ripen. The thing about good fig scents is the balance between the leaf, wood and fruit, and this L'Occitane product is a really good one. Now I want a full range of body, personal care and perfume with this smell. And also a laundry line, while we're at it.

I only got the refills, not the entire set, because I prefer to hunt for nice bottles and containers in other places and I've been buying the reeds in bulk online ever since I discovered I can use diffusers all over the house as long as they are placed strategically out of cat and harm's way.

L'Occitane Fig Tree Leaf Diffuser refills ($16, 3.4 oz) are available from L'Occitane stores all over creation as well as online.

Image: Gelini's Fig Tree byDeborah J Humphries