Breath of Spring: Yves Rocher Homme Nature

So there I was yesterday, in the middle of writing a post, and I stepped away for a few minutes. When I returned, I discovered that A Very Bad Thing had happened to my computer. An hour and a half of frustrating experimentation suggested that the Very Bad Thing involved the USB ports--all three of them!--becoming discombobulated in some way. Two phone calls later, I had arranged to have The Very Bad Thing fixed (thank you, one-year warranty!), and here I am, thanking my lucky stars that I hadn't given away or sold or otherwise disposed of my previous Mac, which, naturally enough, still works perfectly (but after four years seemed a little slow and otherwise limited compared to this lovely creature).

We now return you to your previously scheduled fragrance review, courtesy of this stalwart workhorse.

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I hate cucumbers. I hate the astringent taste of them, I hate the sound they make (that wet crunch! yuck!), and most of all I hate the way they smell. Yet, perversely enough, I really love two scents that have cucumber as an introductory note: Todd Oldham and Yves Rocher Homme Nature.

Just as Yves Rocher's Nature Millenaire Pour Homme is one of my autumn mainstays, Homme Nature is something I bring out every spring, because there's hardly anything more springlike. Straight out of the bottle it's a rainy garden of growing things: green leaves, cucumber, a little mint, the bracing smell of watercress, and some remarkably transparent spice notes. It manages to be fresh and invigorating without resorting to that tired ozonic note that nearly every fresh fragrance for the last twenty years has employed.

Most scents last a long time on my skin, but this one's an exception: it burns out within a few hours, leaving a bare trace of sandalwood that I can only smell very close by. But is that such a bad thing? It never gets a chance to offend anyone or overstay its welcome. I'll gladly take four or five hours of this over twelve hours of something less interesting.