China Bayles' Book of Days (41 page)

JULY 15

Today is St. Swithin’s Day.

St. Swithin’s Day if thou does rain
For forty days it will remain;
St. Swithin’s Day if thou be fair
For forty days ‘twill rain na mair.
—TRADITIONAL WEATHER LORE

The Weather in Your Garden

We have satellites and Nex-rad radar and the TV weatherman to tell us what sort of weather to expect. But in past centuries, farmers and gardeners could only look to the skies and depend on folk wisdom for their meteorological forecast. The St. Swithin’s Day rhyme is a good example.

Saint Swithin was a Saxon bishop of Winchester in the ninth century. According to legend, he asked to be buried outdoors, so that “the sweet rain from heaven” could fall on his grave. For nine years, that’s where he stayed—until the Winchester monks decided to move him to a splendid shrine inside the cathedral. The ceremony, planned for July 15, 971, was rained out, or so the story goes, and the rain continued for 40 days. Hence the prediction: foul weather on St. Swithin’s Day will bring 40 days of rain—but not often enough to make it a reliable prognosticator, according to British meteorologists.

But there are other weather proverbs that might help:

• If the leaves show their undersides, beware of foul weather.

• When the dew is on the grass, rain will never come to pass.

• When you hear the rain crow call, the rain will fall.

• When the wind’s in the south, the rain’s in its mouth.

If these don’t work, try looking at your garden. Clover, chickweed, dandelions, morning glories, anemone, and tulips are said to fold their petals prior to a rain. If the calendula blossom opens before seven, you’ll soon hear thunder; if it stays open all day, you’re in for sunshine. Most reliable, perhaps, is the bog pimpernel (
Anagallis tenella
), also called shepherd’s weather glass and poor man’s barometer. It is immortalized in this quatrain:

Pimpernel, pimpernel, tell me true
Whether the weather be fine or no;
No heart can think, no tongue can tell,
The virtues of the pimpernel.

And for predicting the temperature, try your local rhododendron, which furls its leaves as the temperature rises and falls: completely closed at 20°F, completely open at 60°F.

Who needs the weather man?

Read more about weather lore:

The Farmer’s Almanac

JULY 16

My garden is an honest place. Every tree and every vine are incapable of concealment, and tell after two or three months exactly what sort of treatment they have had.

—RALPH WALDO EMERSON

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

—FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Vining Herbs

Most of us think of herbs as relatively small plants—until we stand in the shade of a ginseng tree. To broaden your herbal repertory even further, consider these herbal vines, all of which are as honest as Emerson says they are, but are capable of concealing a multitude of architectural crimes.

• English Ivy (
Hedera helix
). Perennial evergreen vine. According to herbalist Maud Grieve: “Ivy was in high esteem among the ancients. Its leaves formed the poet’s crown, as well as the wreath of Bacchus, to whom the plant was dedicated, probably because of the practice of binding the brow with Ivy leaves to prevent intoxication, a quality formerly attributed to the plant. We are told by old writers that the effects of intoxication by wine are removed if a handful of Ivy leaves are bruised and gently boiled in wine and drunk.” Also used in divination.

• Hops (
Humulus lupulus
). Robust perennial vine, may grow 30 feet in one season. Antibiotic and anti-inflammatory, hops have been used in salves and wound compresses. The plant has a sedative action and has been used in teas, as well as sleep pillows. Used in brewing beer.

• Passionflower (
Passiflora incarnata
). Vigorous perennial vine. Widely used to treat sleep disorders, nervousness, headache; it is favored because it is effective without narcotic after-effects. Native to South and Central America and first documented in the 1560s, this plant is available in most nurseries. Not reliably hardy in colder climates.

• Love-in-a-puff (
Cardiospermum halicacabum
—see February 6). A fast-growing annual or tender perennial. In Chinese medicine, a tea brewed from the leaves is used to treat skin ailments and promote wound healing. In India, the leaves are mixed with castor oil and used to treat rheumatism and joint stiffness. The leaf juice soothes earaches.

Read more about native vines, many of them herbal:

Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines: A Guide to Using, Growing, and Propagating North American Woody Plants,
by William Cullina

Ivy, ivy, I love you, in my bosom I put you. The first young man to speak to me My future husband he shall be.
—TRADITIONAL LOVE CHARM

JULY 17

With all the rain we’ve been having, the Hopi dye sunflowers were taller and larger than usual, their orange-rimmed heads plump with purple-black seeds. The safflowers too, were vigorous and woody, while the unruly madder (a distant cousin of that all-important cinchona tree) was thigh-high and sprawling.

—INDIGO DYING: A CHINA BAYLES MYSTERY

Seeing Red

I didn’t know much about the dye herbs until I began doing the research for
Indigo Dying,
China’s full-color mystery. Then, as I usually do with these novels, I did as much hands-on research as I could find time for. I discovered that many of the plants in my herb garden are good to dye with—goldenrod, tansy, mint, mullein, marigold, and yarrow—and that a great many of the wild plants growing at Meadow Knoll yield natural dyes: coreopsis, Joe-Pye weed, dock, burdock, black-eyed Susan, milkweed, osage orange, and sumac. I also planted two dye herbs that were new to me: coltsfoot and madder.

Madder (
Rubia tinctorum
) really likes my garden. Really. China wasn’t kidding when she described it as “thigh-high and sprawling,” although she might have added “plain-Jane and homely,” to boot. Madder would probably like your garden, too, but do think twice before you plant it. Once it has put its roots down, it’s here to stay. If you don’t want it to colonize your entire neighborhood, be ruthless.

But this plain-Jane plant has a secret personality. It can make you see red. Literally. Dried and chopped, that tangle of woody roots yields a clear, bright, gorgeous red, which has been treasured for centuries. A fragment of madder-dyed cloth found in India is some 5,000 years old; a belt found in Tutankhamun’s tomb was put there in 1350 BCE and the whole of the ancient world was mad for madder. In the Far East, it was a major cash crop and, by the mid-1600s, it was being planted across Europe. In 1865, worldwide production had risen to about 70,000 tons a year. But in 1869, German chemists synthesized alizarin, the pigment that turns madder red, and the new chemical dye became available at half the price of madder. The madder market crashed, and madder plantations around the world were abandoned.

Madder is more difficult to use than to grow, and it may be a challenge to get that clear, bright color. But once you’ve seen madder red, you’ll want more of it. For instructions and encouragement, read the section on the plant in
A Dyer’s Garden.

Read more about the colorful herbs:

A Dyer’s Garden
, by Rita Buchanan

Beware of wearing red in the garden
For bees dislike that color.
—TRADITIONAL LORE FROM THE CHANNEL ISLANDS

JULY 18

On this day in 1861, the Battle of Bull Run was fought.

Now, if we only had some china-berry trees here, we shouldn’t need any other grease. They are making splendid soap at Vicksburg with china-balls. They just put the berries into the lye and it eats them right up and makes a fine soap.

—LETTER, CITED IN CIVIL WAR PLANTS & HERBS

Making Do and Doing Without

In 1861, when the Civil War began, people in the North and the South began a time of making-do and doing without. For Southerners, however, the times were exceedingly difficult, and the women—many of whom had been accustomed to fine foods, clothing, and plenty of household help—discovered resources in themselves and in the land that they had not suspected.

• Coffee (that all-important herbal stimulant) rose to fifty dollars a pound. Roasted and ground rye, wheat, corn, sweet potatoes, beans, groundnuts, chestnuts, chicory, okra, sorghum, and dandelion—all were used as substitutes. One woman reported that sliced potatoes were dried, toasted, and ground, and made into a “really delicious” beverage.

• The leaves of currant, raspberry, and blackberry bushes, and of willow, holly, sage, and garden herbs were dried and substituted for tea.

• Sorghum molasses, honey, and even a syrup of watermelon juice were substituted for sugar.

• Parthenia Hague also reported that dogwood berries were substituted for quinine, while the bark of the wild cherry, poplar, and wahoo tree were used to treat dysentery. A syrup made of mullein, globe flower (
Trollius Europaeus
), and wild-cherry bark was a cough remedy. Sassafras treated bronchitis and pneumonia, and boneset (
Eupatorium perfoliatum
) was administered to malaria patients.

• Ladies grew poppies to make laudanum and made a painkiller from jimsonweed.

• The North had problems, too. “I will not move my army without onions,” General Grant wired the War Office in 1864, perhaps in a double entendre: Onions were another prized laxative. The War Office sent him three boxcar loads.

From the
Confederate Receipt Book,
1863:

Table Beer: To eight quarts of boiling water put a pound of treacle, a quarter of an ounce of ginger, and two bay leaves, let this boil for a quarter of an hour, then cool, and work it with yeast as other beer.

Acorn coffee: Take sound ripe acorns, wash them while in the shell, dry them, and parch until they open, take the shell off, roast with a little bacon fat, and you will have a splendid cup of coffee.

Read more:

Civil War Plants & Herbs,
by Patricia B. Mitchell

JULY 19

I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around.

—JAMES BEARD

Tasteful Tarragon

I’m not sure I’d go as far as the esteemed Mr. Beard, but of all the artemisias, tarragon (
Artemisia dracunculus
var.
sativa
) is without a doubt the tastiest. In fact, its distinctive taste—a complex amalgam of anise, licorice, mint, grass, and pepper, with a resinous tang—is the reason that tarragon is still around, since it is one of a very few culinary herbs that never made a medicinal name for themselves. Tarragon is congenial with vegetables, salads, fish and chicken, and especially happy in vinegar. In your northern garden, you’ll want to start with plants, for the true tarragon rarely flowers and hence does not set seeds. At the nursery, give them the pinch test, and only buy plants that have the distinctive tarragon taste. Avoid Russian tarragon (
Artemisia dracunculoides
) ; it doesn’t have much taste. Tarragon sulks in Southern gardens, so if you live where the summers are very warm, try Mexican Mint Marigold (
Tagetes lucida
), which has a bonus of pretty yellow flowers.

If you’re experimenting with tarragon, try this easy recipe.

GRILLED TARRAGON CHICKEN

1 tablespoon chopped fresh or ½ tablespoon dried
tarragon
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2-3 minced garlic cloves
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons lemon juice
salt and pepper
2 tablespoon olive oil
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

In a small bowl, place all ingredients except chicken. Whisk together. Pound chicken to about ¾-inch thickness. Arrange in a shallow pan and pour marinade over it, coating both sides. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours. Grill chicken until cooked through, turning to brown all sides. Serve immediately. Serves 4.

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.

—ALICE MAY BROCK

JULY 20

Where there are herbs even the smallest of gardens has a human past and is a human thing.

—HENRY BESTON

A Wheelbarrow Herb Garden

My favorite small herb garden is planted in a wheelbarrow, instantly gratifying to create and easy to maintain. I made mine from an old wheelbarrow that had outlived its usefulness and has several rusted-out spots in the bottom, perfect for drainage! I covered the bottom with old window-screening, to prevent the soil from washing out, and half-filled the barrow with a light, fast-draining potting medium.