420 All Month: Violet Vixen

The thing about writing one of these every day for a month that is both the most stressful and most engaging is that I feel a deep need to do more with my entries than just review the strain. If I were to force myself to do away with all the preamble and storytelling and strip one of these down to just the two paragraphs describing the strain itself, I would feel like it was naked, almost meaningless. I know there can be beauty and poetry in short form, and there’s the old saying that “brevity is the soul of wit,” but something I’ve learned about myself as I’ve transitioned through the various stages in my life is that my brain’s organizational system is based all on a narrative infrastructure. Smell is deeply tied to memory, and some people can tell you about every meal they’ve ever eaten, and some of us remember by contextualizing every detail we can into the various narrative arcs in which we live and see the world.

That has nothing to do with Violet Vixen specifically. I was about to begin this piece differently, but that beginning was nearly identical to a few posts ago, so I scrapped it and began pondering the larger question about why I needed the preamble in the first place. I was going to start with noting that I was going to do something different this morning, but since I’d said that already for the other post, you get that here in the second paragraph. The thing I’m doing differently with this post is that I am reviewing something I didn’t like the first time around but have recently revisited to give a second shot. I specifically noted at least a year-and-a-half to two years ago in my far less detailed “research notes” at the time that I was not a fan of Violet Vixen. But it was a different cultivator, and I was a different smoker when I first starting taking all of this more seriously.

But since I first tried it, the strain has continued to sell well, and it is well-liked by friends and co-workers, and now I can’t for the life of me recall what didn’t impress me about it. So I grabbed some new flower, packed myself a bowl, and took another shot, promising to give it a fair but honest review on the blog. Since I haven’t reviewed something I didn’t like so far, it felt a little risky. But all that said, I’m really enjoying it this time around. I’m flipping the script again and talking about the high first. I first-drafted most of the introduction while still feeling this high. It got me into a delightfully light euphoria; I felt creative inspiration, and was immediately looking forward to not only writing this but the next two projects at least that I wanted to work on that day. This strain may not have the laser focus of Super Lemon Haze nor the fluttery hummingbird high of Lemon OG Haze, but my motivation to do things is at 11.

The flower itself too was excellent. The pale green of the bud was largely obscured by the clusters of long, pumpkin orange pistils, and all of it popping with bright trichomes. It smells like a bag of grape fruit snacks (not gummy candy, the fruit snacks made with real fruit and not artificial flavors) being eaten outside in the early summer, and the aroma of lawns isn’t quite all fresh cut but is still bright and green in the background. It hits relatively well, with a gently buttery texture to the medium-bodied smoke. The flavor is unfortunately lost a bit more than usual, muting the grape a bit and losing the green grassy altogether in favor of a lightly skunky aftertaste. Some people are bigger fans of skunky weed than I, so for them I imagine this would be a note in Violet Vixen’s favor. And it’s not bad, it’s just not as nice as the aroma, in my opinion.

So, Violet Vixen, cultivated by SeaWeed Co, I would like to apologize for my earlier misgivings. I don’t know if last time was the context, or the grow (I doubt it, as I generally like what’s coming from that other unnamed cultivator) or something else, but I can’t think of a single specific thing that pushed this strain to the side. It’s got a place in my toolbelt for when I need a creative boost that’s otherwise really well balanced.