BurnedThumb

Website of poet Elizabeth Rimmer

Half a Hundred Herbs

Half a Hundred Herbs Week 42 – Mullein

This is a herb of dry stony hillsides, apparently. You would think it would hate this year’s summer, so wet, so overcast and humid, but apparently not. My plants this year – from the seeds of this plant – are all flourishing, with enormous felty grey leaves, and flower spikes pushing through the lush undergrowth, because all the herbs are pushing out leaves as fast as they can go.

Mullein has an odd, occasionally sinister back-story. It is known sometimes as hag’s-taper, because it is thought that witches used the fibres of the leaves to make wicks for the lamps they used in rituals. On the other hand, they were often planted to keep witches away, and Ulysses is supposed to have taken a mullein with him when he went to confront Circe. Actually, it must have been used quite widely for making candles or providing tinder to start fires, as it is also known as candle-wick plant and torches.

Its other chief use has always been in the treatment of diseases of the lungs, particularly TB, to the point where it was commonly grown outside cottages in Ireland, because of the prevalence of the disease. I can’t help feeling a shiver down my spine when I think of this, as TB overshadowed much of my family history, and the women of previous generations were haunted by the fear of it appearing in any of their connections – perhaps this is why it gets associated with witches!

Other names are to do with its appearance – velvet plant, shepherd’s staff, Jupiter’s staff, Aaron’s rod, wild ice leaf. It is very tall, silver and gold among the drab and fading flowers of late summer. It is generous with its flowers and in setting seed, and an unexpected pleasure in a garden.

July 13, 2015
Half a Hundred Herbs Week 41 – Coltsfoot

coltsfoot

This photograph was taken in early march. Coltsfoot doesn’t look like this now, it’s more like this:

the large rather rubbery leaves coming up through the brambles are what you’re looking for. Coltsfoot is one of the earliest flowers to come out in spring, and because the flowers appear before the leaves, it is sometimes known as son-before-the-father. When I first moved to this part of the world, I could not find coltsfoot at all, and thought it might not thrive so far north, but over the past four or five years I have been able to find more and more plants, possibly because more areas are being left to grow wild.

Coltsfoot is not a herb I have used much. It has a long-standing reputation for being helpful for chest complaints, coughs, bronchitis and asthma. Country people used to dry it and use it as a substitute for tobacco, which can’t have been a good idea, though it did smell sweeter than nicotine, and you didn’t have to pay tax on it.

When I was small, if our pocket money had run really short, you could buy sticks of coltsfoot rock. It was a strange dull sandy-coloured stick, and had a very strange pungent aromatic taste, quite unlike most of the sweets we used to eat – a little bit like sarsparilla. I think it figured in Old English Spangles, if you are old enough to remember those. Some years ago a local health shop had some on sale, and I almost bought one for the nostalgia – until I remembered the taste!

But I still like to see the coltsfoot come out, because it means that finally winter is over!

May 27, 2015
Half a Hundred Herbs Week 40 – Wormwood

There are many varieties of wormwood, some big and spawling, turning ragged and unwieldy, and attracting blackfly (which is ironic, considering its reputation as an insect repellant). This one, artemiisa ponticum, however, is more delicate and dainty, and lacks the abrasive pungency of the more familiar varieties. I have had it in a pot since I got it last summer, because I was worried about it coming through the winter, and this spring I divided it into six offshoots, and all of them are growing strongly.

Wormwood was traditionally used as a purge for those who have over-indulged, and to get rid of parasitic worms. It tastes disgusting, bitter and murky, and frankly punitive. ‘Gall and wormwood’ figure in the Bible as metaphors for remorse, and I am not at all surprised. I don’t know what demented brain thought to put it into absinthe, or having done so, persuaded anyone to drink it. It is used in sachets, with southernwood and rosemary and lavender as a moth repellant.

I can’t help liking it, though, because of its subdued elegance and demure vitality.

In the garden woodruff, alchemilla and lily of the valley are in flower, and the peonies are ready to open. There are weeds I actively encourage here – welsh poppies and cuckoo-flowers which have finally arrived in the garden, quietly throwing out lovely sprays of lilac.

Last week the first swallows and house martins appeared, and this week they are everywhere in this mild weather. And the swifts have come in squadrons, screaming over the fields by the river. All the trees are in full leaf except the ash and the smaller beech trees, and the orchard is in full bloom, pear trees just going over and apple blossoms starry pink and full of bees. And the first rowan tree is in flower.

The new and exciting thing this year is that there are orange tip butterflies. This was an occasional visitor this far north, but I’ve seen several this year already. Although this must be a sign of climate change, I find it hard not to enjoy such fiery sparks of summer.

May 13, 2015
Half a Hundred Herbs Week 39 – Bay

Once we had a bay tree. At its best, it was about seven feet high and as vigorous as anything in the garden. It survived temperatures of -20 degrees, and there was a blackbird’s nest in it. Unfortunately, however, it took up a lot of room and shaded out everything else in the herb patch, so it had to go. We cut it down, dug up roots and punched copper nails into the stump, but for years it kept coming back, and this is one of the suckers thrown up in its last days. For all the vigour of the stems, they don’t root particularly easily, and to be honest, this is my sole success.

Bay is very slow to get going in the spring, which used to cause me some nervousness after the very cold winters, as I wondered if it would ever get going. In France it used to be said that you could tell when you could move your orange trees out of the greenhouse by noticing when the bay started to put out new leaves. But it’s hardier than you would think.

Bay is the first herb I ever used, in savoury mince in my Domestic Science class – you can guess my advanced age by the fact that I not only had the classes, but we actually cooked in them – and it is probably the herb I use most often, in meat sauces, stocks and stews. Its scent is rich, and to me, unmistakeably savoury, but there does seem to be a vogue for putting it in sweet custards, which I don’t really get.

It has some medicinal uses, for liver and stomach complaints, and can be used in pot pourri to add depth and a more masculine edge. But most of its non-kitchen uses are magical or symbolic. Wreaths of the leaves symbolised victory, and it is said that the oracles at Delphi were given under the influence of the smoke from burning bay branches. Trees were planted to provide protection from demons and witchcraft, and the sudden death of a bay tree was regarded as an omen of disaster. Bay and rosemary were used as decorations for houses at Christmas before the introduction of Christmas trees, and the twigs were burned on Twelfth Night, which may have provided a very welcome disinfectant and insect-repellant smoke after the crowded and stuffy holiday season.

This is a plant I bought when I was feeling pessimistic about the prospects of the rooted suckers. It’s doing pretty well too, a little ahead of my own plant. I’ll keep them in pots, clipped small, and harvest the leaves regularly.

The garden is doing very well, in spite of the heavy rain. Chervil and coriander have germinated, and the first harvests of chives and mint are in the freezer. The little plants I put in the revamped culinary patch have settled in well, though I don’t know how much growth the sage plants will put on. Woodruff and cowslips are in flower, and the new lavender hedge and the chamomile offsets I planted out are beginning to thrive. Now it’s all about keeping ahead of the horsetail, hairy bittercress, willow herb and creeping buttercup which will take over if I take my eye off them for a minute!

May 6, 2015
Half a Hundred Herbs Week 38 Scented-leaf Geranium

These are the scented leaf geraniums I bought last year. They have overwintered in the house on a north-facing windowsill, but now that the weather is warmer, they are in the greenhouse. By the end of the month it should be warm enough to put them outside on the patio, but as they are frost-tender, being from South Africa, I will have to wait for the threatened cold snap to be behind us before I take any risks. The lemon verbena which seems to be thriving in the open air will also have to come back in for a night or two!

The leaves of my geraniums are scented with apple, lemon and rose. You can also get some vairieties with scents of eucalyptus, peach, pineapple and balsam – there’s even one listed in Jekka McVicar’s book which smells of chocolate mint. She lists twenty-three varieties, but I have gone for the ones I think I will make most use of.

The leaves can be used to flavour such things as cakes, jellies and syrups -you don’t eat them, but remove them once the flavour is sufficiently strong. I will probably concentrate on steeping them in oil for scent, and for pot pourri.

Mny of my herbs are putting on some strong growth now, and, although the plants seem rather puny (especially the rosemary), yu can now make out the concept of the knot garden:

I have sowed marigolds, cornflowers and poppy seeds in the spaces, so I hope it will be more colourful during the summer.

April 30, 2015
Half a Hundred Herbs – the culinary patch

all planted up

The new herbs are in – sage, rosemary, oregano, thyme, winter savory and lemon thyme. They are too small to make much impact yet, but they seem to be settling in well, and the current good weather is certainly helping. The chives are flourishing, lemon balm is coming through, and the sorrel plants are beginning to recover from their rough handling. All the seeds I sowed two weeks ago are up, apart from parsley (well, it does have to go seven times down to hell before it comes up) and mollucella laevis, which isn’t doing a thing.

The knot garden is beginning to green up, but nothing shows up on a photograph yet, so I’ll wait a week or two and try again. Some of the other herbs are doing well –

mint, tarragon and chives

Pots which were in the greenhouse now have lots of new shoots.

flourishing violet plant

\the violets in the stock bed seem to like the richer soil here.

primroses and wind anemones

I’ve had my first flowers on the wind anemones under the birch tree. The next step will be to sow seeds outside – chervil, marigolds, poppies. Rain is forecast over the weekend, so that will be a job for tomorrow.

The frogspawn has gone from the full stop stage to the comma, as the tadpoles grow, and the hedges are full of sparrows and blackbirds building nests. I can hear starlings, great tits, wrens and chaffinches singing most days, and yesterday for the first time this year, I heard skylarks. They must be in the fields at the end of the village, but their song pours into my garden like rain. Fabulous.

April 9, 2015
Half a Hundred Herbs – chamomile cuttings

The chamomile lawn looks like this just now, a little bit battered, and very small. But considering it was only one plant when I got it, I don’t feel too bad about it. There are tulips coming through, and some madonna lilies, which apparently like to have their roots shaded, so I hope they will be happy here, and actually flower, for a change. I’ve cut back all the dead growth, but found that a lot of it was runners, like strawberry runners, with baby chamomile plants appearing at the nodes, so I’ve potted them up, as you see here.Some of them look a bit fragile, but it’s plants for free, so any success will be a bonus! The lawn will be mulched with compost, to feed it, but also to improve the soil structure. We didn’t have too wet a winter, but the last month has left the garden cold, heavy and sodden.

How bad this was I didn’t realise until I started work on the culinary patch. It looked like this in May last year:but now it looks like this:The reason is this little beauty,water avens (geum rivale). This first appeared in the field beside the river, then sneaked its way into my garden, where it seeded itself lavishly among the mulleins and hyssops. It’s a surprisingly sophisticated, delicate little flower in yellow and pink, and I was harbouring it under the illusion that it was its relative, the wood avens (also known as herb bennet) which has a fragrant root you can use in pot pourri. However, water avens is a good plant for bees and butterflies, so quite valuable in its own way, only the clue is in the name. It likes it wet. All my mediterranean plants – planted on the top of a south facing bank, were sulking and fading away, and moss was taking over everything.

So the water avens has moved beside the pond, and the culinary patch was cleared. A barrow of compost was put on, and all the moisture lovers – the sorrel, mint lemon balm and chives, have been moved to the lower side. The top layer will be opened up, some sharp sand and compost added, and new plants of sage, oregano, thyme and winter savory will go in. I’ll sow chervil in the gaps, where I hope it will seed itself in the small crannies.

This all meant a lot of traipsing past the pond with barrows of discarded plant material, and the frogs were not at all pleased.About twelve of them are croaking and mating furiously, and there are large lumps of spawn forming. Birds are chasing each other all over the garden too, and every time I go out there is something new to see – leaves on the gooseberry and blackcurrant, a violet, whose rich exotic purple just doesn’t show up in photographs, leaves of arum italicum, hellebore flowers, and the first flower bud on the wind anemones I planted from root cuttings two years ago. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this!

March 19, 2015
Half a Hundred Herbs – Sowing the Seeds

The cloud has come down and it feels bitter outside, although the frost has gone. But on Tuesday, the sun was shining and I took the first photos. The garden is beginning to wake up and put on colour.

The crocuses are out under the rowan tree,

and the first primroses are showing.

I’ve seen frogs mating in the pond, but there isn’t any spawn yet. The black-backed gulls have come up from the coast and they are staking out territories on the warehouse roof, and bullying the smaller black-headeds who have been here all winter and thought they had the river to themselves. There”s a woodpigeon attempting to build a nest in a completely unviable fork in a birch tree, and I’ve heard a woodpecker hammering, and a thrush singing. best of all, the curlews are back.

All of which means it’s time to sow the first seeds. the sweet peas are in, and the tomatoeoas and half-hardy annuals will be next. They’ll go in the propagator on my windowsill – it might look north, but it’s a dormer with light on three sides, so it usually does pretty well. The hardy annuals, first salads and chervil and parsley will go into pots in the greenhouse, which seems to be reliably frost-free, and we’ll be off.

The dried and frozen herbs I’ve been cooking with over the winter are coming to an end, but the chives are coming through now, and the sage thyme and oregano have enough growth to risk a first cut. Everything else is beginning to bud, now, though the rosemary stilllooks a bit shocked, and the sorrel has a lot of fresh green leaves. I love the taste of sorrel, but you do have to get it very early, or it will be too sour for pleasure. There may be sorrel sauce with the chicken tonight!

March 12, 2015
Fascinating article for a herb geek

I am not quite old enough to have had to learn these weights and measures tables at school, but you could still buy exercise books which had them printed on the back for handy reference. If you are a historical herb usage geek, you’ll find this article fascinating!

https://www.justbotanics.co.uk/blog/Old-Apothecary-Measures/

March 11, 2015
Out of my Head and into the Garden

We hit a milestone this week. when I went out this morning it was light for the first time, and although it is cold and wet, and was seriously icy this morning, this is the week that gardening finally got outside.

I’ve done a bit of clearing, and weeded the world’s smallest knot garden. Nothing is looking very bright there yet, (so no photos), but it looks as though all the plants have come through the winter. The southernwood plants are bare and floppy, and I was convinced I’d lost one, but there are buds forming on even the most puny and motheaten, and I have some confidence.

I am not so sure about my lavenders, however. They look as though they have taken a bashing, and though there may well be some regrowth as the weather warms up, I’m convinced I’ve lost a few. I should have overwintered them in the greenhouse, with the agapanthus and myrtle and some other stuff i got nervous about. Mostly this paid off, and there are signs of new growth on the mint, myrtle and tarragon. I took some cuttings of scented-leaf geraniums and lavender dentata, and most of them are well-rooted. I potted them up yesterday, and they are looking quite perky.

I’ve also made some thyme disinfectant, which you make by boiling up a lot of the prunings of the thyme currently billowing all over the steps with plenty of water for about an hour. You get a very sinister brown liquid which smells, but not too strongly, of herbs, and which has a reputation for being useful in combating germs – even MRSA and other troublesome strains of bacteria. This is just in time for some heavy duty spring-cleaning coming up over the next week or two – the disnfectant will keep, in a cold place, for about a month.

Next week is StAnza, and I will be there for most of it. My head is spinning with all the good things on offer, which you can discover here, but I’m particularly looking forward to Clare Trevien’s Shipwrecked House, a workshop with Gerrie Fellowes about poetry sequences, and a poetry breakfast (which comes with Danish pastries, as if I won’t have had a StAndrews breakfast) with Christine de Luca, Kei Miller and others. This is all well and good, but it means I’ll be leaving the seed sowing until after I get back. And then garden gardening will begin in earnest.

February 25, 2015

Latest Posts

Blog Categories

Archives by Date

Newsletter

Tag Cloud