China Bayles' Book of Days (47 page)

THERESA LOE’S CHAMOMILE SPA OIL

¼ cup jojoba oil
6 drops of Roman chamomile essential oil
4 drops lavender essential oil
2 drops tea tree essential oil

Combine all oils in a glass jar or bottle with a tight-fitting lid. Store in a cool dry place. Use within 1 year.

Enjoy an herbal calendar:

The New Herbal Calendar,
by Theresa Loe, with illustrations by Peggy Turchette

AUGUST 14

The flowers of harvest-time—Harvest Bells, Harvest Daisies and Harvest Lilies—all now in bloom.

—CHARLES KIGHTLY, THE PERPETUAL ALMANACK
OF FOLKLORE, AUGUST 14

Flowers and Herbs

It’s not at all unusual for us to drive down a country lane and recognize not one plant of the hundreds that grow along the roadside. In earlier generations, however, people had a name—and a use—for every plant. Here is what country people in England knew about the “harvest flowers” that Kightly mentions.

HARVEST BELLS

Kightly’s harvest bells are the harebells (
Campanula rotundifolia
) of folklore, also known as the “bluebells of Scotland.” If you picked this dangerous flower, its bell might ring, summoning one of the plant’s magical protectors who could carry you off. The “hare” of “hare-bell” referred to the legendary shape-shifting magical hare, an ally of this plant. Other names: Witch-bell, Witch-thimble, Fairy Ringers, Granny’s Tears.

HARVEST DAISIES

Kightly’s harvest daisy is the familiar ox-eye daisy that brightens the meadows and pastures. About it, John Pechey (1694) had this to say: “The whole Herb, Stalks, Leaves and Flowers, boyl’d in Posset-drink, and drunk, is accounted an excellent Remedy for an Asthma, Consumption, and Difficulty of breathing. . . . A Decoction of the Herb cures all Diseases that are occasion’d by drinking cold Beer when the Body is hot.” And if your hot body is not afflicted by drinking cold beer, here’s another way you can use this valuable herb: In Germany, harvest daisies were hung around the house to ward off lightning.

HARVEST LILIES

The herbalist John Gerard turned up his nose at the invasive harvest lilies—“Bell-bind” or wild morning-glory (
Calystegia sepium
)—dismissing them as “unprofitable weedes and hurtfull unto eche thing that groweth next unto them.” But country folk ate the nutritious roots, stalks, and young shoots, carefully, because the plant is also purgative. They used the roots to make a wound poultice and brewed a decoction to increase the flow of bile. The flexible stems became a useful and readily available twine. And harvesters’ children played a game with the flowers, squeezing the green calyx so that the white petals popped off. It was called “Granny Jump Out of Bed.”

Learn more about plant lore:

The Englishman’s Flora,
by Geoffrey Grigson

When snails climb up the stalks of grass, wet weather is at hand.

—COLONIAL AMERICAN WEATHER LORE

AUGUST 15

Today is the Feast of the Assumption, celebrating the Virgin Mary, first celebrated in 529.

Mary’s Plants

Before the rise of Christianity, many plants were dedicated to pagan goddesses. But as the Catholic Church expanded its political territory and Christian priests began to convert pagans, the flower names were converted as well. Mary (and other saints) took the place of Venus, Diana, and Juno. The tables were turned at the Reformation, however, and many of the plants whose names had been changed were converted again, not back to their pagan names, but to “lady,” without the “our lady” reference. Political correctness in the garden. Now, both styles occur.

The best-known of these Mary-herbs is lady’s-mantle, a graceful, frothy chartreuse plant prized as a wound healer. In medieval times, alchemists believed that the dew that collected in its pretty, pleated leaves had magical properties. The plant’s genus name,
Al-chemilla,
refers to the alchemical use of the plants.

Other “our-lady” herbs:

• Our lady’s bedstraw (
Galium verum
). The name comes from the Christian legend that this was one of the Bethlehem manger’s “cradle herbs,” and also from the plant’s use as a fragrant herb (like its cousin, sweet woodruff, it contains coumarin) for stuffing straw mattresses. Medicinally, bedstraw was used as a diuretic and to treat bleeding. The herb has the interesting property of curdling milk; Tuscan dairy farmers used it to make cheese.

• Our lady’s thistle, or milk thistle (
Silybum marianum
) took its name from the story that the Virgin’s milk fell on its leaves when she hastened to conceal the infant Jesus from Herod’s soldiers. The plant has a long history of medicinal use, mostly as a protection for the liver; contemporary herbalists recommend it for liver ailments, a use which is supported by recent pharmacological studies.

• Our lady’s smock (cuckoo flower, meadowcress); our lady’s tears (lily-of-the-valley); our lady’s bunch of keys (cowslip); our lady’s gloves (foxglove).

Read more about Mary’s plants:

“Flowers of the Madonna,” by Harold N. Moldenke,
Horticulture Magazine,
December, 1953

The Blessed Virgin Maries feast hath here
her place and time
Wherein departing from the earth, she did
the heavens climb.
Great bundles then of hearbes to church the people
fast do bear
To which against all hurtful things the
priest doth hallow there.
—SIXTEENTH CENTURY HYMN

AUGUST 16

Yesterday was the birthday of Julia Child, who was born on August 15, 1912, in Pasadena, California.

Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.

—JULIA CHILD

The French Chef

Fannie Farmer may have made us aware of our “American cuisine” and led us to practice the science of cookery, but Julia Child seduced us from our casseroles and gave us France—and became an American icon in the process. Her profound and far-reaching influence on American cookery earned her the title of “Mother of the American Food Renaissance,” while her sparkling joie de vivre turned cooking into an exciting adventure and focussed our attention on the pleasures of the table. As food correspondent Sara Moulton says, it was Julia (St. Julia, Our Lady of the Ladle) who urged us all to march into our supermarkets and “demand leeks and shallots.” And it was Julia who brought the phrase “herbes de Provence” into the vocabulary of American cooks.

HERBES DE PROVENCE

Herbes de Provence is the name given to a group of herbs that are favorites in southern France: bay, rosemary, thyme, summer savory, cloves, lavender, tarragon, chervil, sage, marjoram, basil, fennel seed, and orange zest. They are available in a dried mix, or you can create your own fresh blend (as Julia always recommended) to complement the dish you’re making.

For the fresh blend, simply mix together 1 tablespoon each of finely chopped fresh oregano, savory, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, and lavender. Or you can use your harvest of dried herbs for gifts, with the basic recipe below. Package the herbs in colorful calico bags tucked into small terra-cotta pots and tied with a raffia bow.

HERBES DE PROVENCE

3 parts dried rosemary, crushed fine
3 parts dried marjoram
3 parts dried thyme
2 parts dried summer savory
2 parts dried lavender flowers, crushed
2 parts dried orange peel, crushed to a powder
2 parts dried bay leaves, crushed fine
1 part dried mint
1 part fennel seed
½ part ground cloves
½ part coriander

Blend thoroughly. Store in an airtight container.

Read more about Our Lady of the Ladle:

Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child
, by Noel Riley Fitch

Mastering the Art of French Cooking
, by Julia Child

AUGUST 17

Our lives are dyed the color of our imaginations.

—MARCUS AURELIUS

Indigo Dying
: About China’s Books

Each one of China’s mysteries teaches me something new about herbs, but when it came to
Indigo Dying,
I had a lot to learn. As you might guess by the title, the signature herbs all have to do with dyeing, a craft I hadn’t yet tried. Pretty soon I was out in the fields collecting dye plants and rooting through dozens of sources, collecting information about the colorful herbs. (See May 31 and July 17 for additional background.)

I was most fascinated by indigo, however, a shrubby herb whose leaves produced a rich, clear blue, much prized by all cultures. Dying with indigo traditionally involved fermenting the leaves with human urine, then drying the residue and forming it into large cakes. Indigo was so valuable that it created an incentive for direct trade between Europe and the Orient, leading to international conflict over the “Devil’s Dye.” Here are a few of the interesting tidbits I discovered in my reading and used as chapter headings in the book.

• If we go far back in time and space we find the colour blue associated with power, magic and divinity. . . . [The historian Pliny] describes the Roman legions’ unusual encounter with blue-dyed Celts in AD 44 and 45: “Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem, atque horribiliores sunt in pugna aspectu.” [All Britons dye themselves with woad which makes them blue, in order that in battle their appearance may be the more terrible.] —Gosta Sandberg
Indigo Textiles: Technique and History

• One drop of indigo is enough to spoil a whole bowl of milk.—Japanese proverb

• I would rather wear my own indigo wrapper than a rich red cloak that isn’t mine.—African proverb

• On the island of Sumba, the art of indigo dyeing is part of a larger traditional practice involving the mysteries of divination, magic, and herbal medicines. This complex body of occult knowledge is possessed only by a few Kodi women who understand the dangerous practices of moro, or “blueness,” and are known as the “blue-handed women” (warico kabahu moro). Because of their association with indigo dyeing, they are viewed by the Kodi as intimately associated with death.—Paraphrased from Janet Hoskins, “Why Do Ladies Sing the Blues?” in
Cloth and Human Experience,
edited by Annette B. Weiner & Jane Schneider

Read more:

Indigo Dying: A China Bayles Mystery,
by Susan Wittig Albert

AUGUST 18

Whereas in our times the Art of Simpling is so farre from being rewarded, that it is grown contemptible and he is accounted a simple fellow, that pretends to have any skill therein. Truly it is to be lamented that the men of these times which pretend to so much Light should goe the way to put out their owne Eyes, by trampling upon that which should preserve them, to the great discouragement of those that have any mind to bend their Studies this way.

—WILLIAM COLE, THE ART OF SIMPLING, 1656

The Household Simple-Closet and Still-Room

Herb gardens weren’t just for pretty in our foremothers’ days; they were a necessity. Every good wife and mother had an herb garden to supply her domestic pharmacopoeia, and most practiced the art of “simpling”: using one or two herbs at a time in salves, lotions, teas, and tinctures, rather than creating complex recipes as the physicians did, often with outlandish ingredients. “Simplers” grew their own medicinal herbs, harvested and stored them carefully, and used them with a full understanding (as much as was permitted at that time) of their properties and effects.

The simple-closet (the place where herbs were stored) and the still-room (where medicines were made) were the special provinces of the mother and daughters of the house, and were never entrusted to servants. The shelves contained things like ivy berries, ash “keys,” daisy root, the inner bark of oak, goldenrod, and yarrow, thyme, motherwort, and peony roots. From these supplies the good wife prepared herbal wines and waters, syrups, juleps, and vinegars, as well as tinctures, conserves, confections, and treacles. For external use, she prepared oils, ointments, liniments, compresses, poultices—and of course, scent bags and potpourris. And then there were the magical purposes of herbs: love philters and charms, protection, cleansing, good luck. Yes, of course, superstition and folklore was part and parcel of the process, but there was also careful thought, methodical preparation, and meticulous observation—more than we can say, perhaps, about our consumption of pharmaceuticals today. Perhaps it’s time to restore the simple-closet and the still-room to our homes.

Read more about simpling:

The Art of Simpling,
by William Coles

With what rare Colours, and sweet Odours do the flourishing Fields and Gardens entertain the Senses. The usefulness of it no judicious man can deny, unless he would also deny the virtues of Herbs, which experience itself doth daily approve. For how often do we see, not only men’s Bodies, but even the Minds of those that are even distracted, to be cured by them?