This morning
The sun is so strong today. All the trees branches wave about in the slight breeze. They look fat and happy and full of light. I’m feeling a bit bi-located again today. Except I’m imaginary. I don’t think where part of me is ever truly existed as I’m visualizing it. Its part of a cultural myth, from a hundred books, songs, films.
If you look on the OBOD website, here, you’ll see a wonderful colourful depiction of part of where I am in my head today. I’m outside from that painting of herbal preparation and harvest, but that’s the mood…in the green green garden, watering my plants, snipping off dead bits, collecting herbs in a low brimmed wide basket, made of twisted twigs. I do actually have that basket; I keep my small garden tools in it. It was given to me by Stanley’s mother (the world’s best completely not pagan yet so full of credentials she should be pagan woman: she is so countrified and knowledgeable about what everything is, where it grows, what it does, how to cook it and how to be almost completely frugal and self-reliant, she puts me to shame).
Still, in my head, there I am, wearing something simultaneously practical and sensually lovely: a pair of faded cut off jean shorts, so I can feel the earth on my knees and thighs when I sit down in that sun. A worn old cotton blouse with tiny mother of pearl buttons, blinking in that sun. Bare feet, so I can twist that cool grass beneath my toes.
In my head, I am tending to my thick and fecund patches of garden Chervil and Purple Loosestrife. That’s because I have this tea towel (given to me, I now remember, by that Empress, Stanley’s mother), showing lots of herbs grown by the Suffolk Herb people at Monks Farm, in Essex. I often find myself ruminating while staring at those marvellous drawings of Chervil and Purple Loosestrife, one atop the other.
You don’t think much about Chervil, I’ll bet you a pound, you don’t. And I bet you a fiver you hardly ever thought of Purple Loosestrife, if you ever heard of it at all. I didn’t, either, before this tea towel (let no one say a tea towel can’t be thought provoking ever again).
Chervil is not renowned, nowadays, as particularly healing, or tasty, or useful. Its one of those sidelined herbs. You hear much more palaver about Basil, or Parsley or Sage, don’t you?
Culpepper says Chervil (also known as Anthriscus Cerefolium) is also called Sweet Cicely, or Mirrhis, as folk-based names. I don’t even really know what it looks like, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it growing. Culpepper says:
The garden Chervil doth at first somewhat resemble Parsley, but after it is better grown, the leaves are much cut in and jagged, resembling hemlock, being a little hairy and of a whitish green colour, sometimes turning reddish in the Summer […]it rises a little above half a foot high, bearing white flowers in spiked tufts, which turn into long and round seeds pointed at the ends, and blackish when they are ripe; of a sweet taste but no smell, though the herb itself smells reasonably well.[1]
Well, there we are. I’m tending that. Under the splendid heading ‘Government and Virtues’, Culpepper says chervil can ‘moderately warm the stomach’, and can ‘dissolve congealed or clotted blood in the body, or that which is clotted by bruises, falls, &c.[2]’ I shan’t say what else he said, because people often read these old tracts as ‘quaint’ which Annoys Me. (Another post, later, will talk positively of Modern Western Herbalism; I just cut out a massive ranty section there). Modern herbals, such as Bartram’s Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine, say chervil can be used to treat high blood pressure and indigestion, as well as having actions as a diuretic and expectorant. Brilliantly useful, to be taken as a tea, ‘thrice daily’…or the fresh squeezed juice, to be used as a lotion for eczema[3]. What a helpful, nifty little herb I am gardening in my imagination. (And how much more successful, thus far, than my actual attempts at gardening?!)
What do modern herbals say about Purple Loosestrife, then, as Culpepper says nothing? The good Jekka McVicar doesn’t forget about Purple Loosestrife, also called Lythrum Salicaria. It got the ‘lythrum’ part from the Greek, meaning ‘gore’ – it was used by battle doctors to stem bleeding and heal wounds. It also used to be used for treating diarrhoea and even dysentery. It also helps to tan leather, with high concentrations of tannin; plus is very useful to beekeepers for wintering colonies of bees: they can collect pollen from it right up till autumn. It can grow to four feet, with lance shaped leaves and pinkish purple flowers that attract hoverflies and dragonflies as well as plentiful butterflies. It’s being scientifically researched today for its properties in healing intestinal illnesses[4]. It’s a proper little helper; I feel all wise-woman-ish. (Its also apparently a bad plant to overrun a wetland area, causing problems with diverting streams and clogging up banks etc; its maligned for this reason in parts of the States.)
***
That was all much earlier. Now its night, and dark; and dinner has been had. In my imaginary head of earlier, I could have cooked with the chervil. Mrs Beeton (Stanley’s mother has 2 copies of this, one huge, and one huger) often used it in soups, along with sorrel (another almost forgotten herb). See here, for Cucumber Soup with chervil and sorrel (you have to navigate a fair bit down the page, but it’s all alphabetical, so it’s easy). You shouldn’t go about the place eating Purple Loosestrife, I have discovered…so don’t try that at home. (Apparently, however, you can use it to attempt to 'calm quarrelsome oxen' by placing it on their yoke...thats the meaning of the 'loosestrife' part of the name...so I hear, from a couple of sources, here's one...)
In my head it’s all time to sleep soon. Soon Tetchyhead will need putting down (yes, he’s Tetchyhead today); and tomorrow I begin my temporary Saturday job of urchining around the wider area delivering unnecessary missives to uncaring and probably irritated people, for very little money, till I find an office job. I am assured that my head will be wonderfully uncluttered during these many hours, and I shall of consequence think of much rubbish to write here. We will see.
So, night comes to the BlackberryJuniper garden. Now the night scented stock is blooming; you can just see them from here under the light of the waning moon. I am wearing a large shawl with long tassels. The air is cooler now. 'Night.
[1] Culpepper’s Complete Herbal, by Nicholas Culpepper, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited (1653; 1995), p.65.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Bartram’s Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine, by Thomas Bartram, London: Constable & Robinson (1998), p.109.
[4] The New Book of Herbs, by Jekka McVicar, London: Dorling Kindersley (2002), p.187.
At last! For ages I've been seeking a specific to calm quarrelsome oxen, and thanks to you I now have one. (My oxen, by the way, quarreling in the field, are called Bim, Bam, and Ubuntu.)
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