China Bayles' Book of Days (9 page)

In a medium nonreactive saucepan over medium heat, combine sugar, butter, corn syrup, and concentrate. Bring to a boil. Add mint and mint flavoring, reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes. May be reheated to serve; may be doubled or tripled.

FEBRUARY 5

In the black seed is the medicine for every disease except death.

—ARAB PROVERB

Love-in-a-Mist

February is the month for love, and love-in-a-mist is the romantic name for
Nigella
, or black cumin, an old-fashioned cottage garden flower and ancient medicinal herb. Its blossom resembles the bachelor button, and hybrid varieties come in a variety of colors, some with a double ruffle of petals. Its tiny black seeds are contained in a puffy, papery striped balloon. Both the flowers and the pods are attractive additions to dried flower arrangements. For centuries, this annual has been cultivated throughout the East, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean area for its many culinary and medicinal purposes.

AS A SEASONING

Nigella
’s black seeds have a fruity fragrance, rather like anise or fennel. Spicy and piquant, they have been used as a substitute for caraway and black pepper.
N. damascena
tastes like nutmeg and can be used to season cookies and fruit salad. The seeds are tiny, though. You’ll need at least 3 teaspoons to flavor a large bowl of salad or a batch of cookies. Experiment for taste.

AS A MEDICINE

Nigella
has been used as a digestive aid, an appetite stimulant, and a cure-all remedy. A bottle of black cumin oil was discovered in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Queen Nefertiti used the oil to keep her skin supple and to preserve her bronze complexion. To treat insect stings, the Romans applied a paste of crushed seeds mixed with vinegar and honey. Now,
Nigella
is found in cough syrups, wound salves, and topical preparations. Modern research has confirmed that the oil is antimicrobial and is an effective treatment for asthma and intestinal parasites. Some researchers suggest that it may be an immune-system booster.

IN YOUR GARDEN

Nigella
prefers to be sown in the ground, but you can start it indoors and transplant it outside after your last frost date. You’ll have flowers in June or July. Make successive plantings in your garden for bloom until frost. Next year, don’t bother, unless you’re planting a hybrid. These plants self-seed readily. The fresh blossoms are lovely; the dried seed pods unusual.

Read more about this ancient herb:

The Healing Power of Black Cumin
, by Sylvia Luetjohann

Nigella serveth well among other sweets to put into sweet waters, bagges, and odoriferous pouders.

—JOHN GERARD, HERBAL, 1597

FEBRUARY 6

Even a modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.

—HENRI FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL

Love-in-a-Puff

Another herb for the month of love is love-in-a-puff (
Cardiospermum halicacabum
), a fast-growing, woody vine (an annual in USDA zones 5-8, a perennial in zones 9-11). Plant it against a trellis to provide support for its tendrils, then stand back and watch it grow—up to 10 feet in a single season. China has planted it in the perfect place: the trellis that hides the garbage cans behind Thyme and Seasons.

BALLOON VINE

The blooms of love-in-a-puff aren’t much to brag about. It’s the unique seed pods that will get your attention. Each pod is an inflated balloon that turns from green to brown as it ripens in the fall, hence the name balloon vine. Squeeze, and the pod pops, revealing three seeds, each bearing the white heart that gives the plant its Latin name,
Cardiospermum
(
cardio
: heart,
spermum
: seed). But do watch where you pop those seeds, for the plant can be invasive.

MEDICINAL USES

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.

IN YOUR GARDEN

You can sow love-in-a-puff directly into the ground when the weather warms, or start the seeds indoors. When the plants have fruited, save the seeds and give them away (tied with a ribbon bow in a bit of tulle) for Valentine’s Day next year. For an especially unique gift, string them as a necklace or a bracelet. They’re said to bring good fortune and good health!

Read more about herbal climbers and the trellises to support them:

Climbing Plants: Enhance Your Garden with Climbers
, by Barbara Abbs

The Garden Trellis: Designs to Build and Vines to Cultivate
, by Ferris Cook

In February the farmer shall make ready his garden grounds to sow and set therein all manner of herbs. He shall repair the hedges of his gardens. He shall buy Bees, he shall make clean their hives very carefully and kill their kings.

—GERVASE MARKHAM, THE ENGLISH HOUSEWIFE, 1615

FEBRUARY 7

Today is the birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author (with her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane) of the beloved Little House books.

It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.

—LAURA INGALLS WILDER

A Garden of Used-to-Be

Laura Ingalls was born in Pepin, Wisconsin, in 1867 and spent her girlhood moving with her family, to Kansas, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Her mother, Caroline, like so many other pioneer women, had the task of making a home wherever the family happened to settle. Pioneer women always took seeds and “starts” (plant divisions) from one home to another, for they could not expect to have what they needed where they settled. Gardens were vital to survival, producing not only vegetables for the table but also the medicinal herbs that women used to treat the family’s common ailments and sweeten their lives with fragrance and flavor.

Planting a pioneer garden—a “Garden of Used-to-Be,” as Laura called it—can be especially fun for children and will help them to learn something about the great variety of uses for important herbs. It also makes an interesting theme in an established garden. If you’d like to include a pioneer corner in your herb garden, consider these plants:

• Medicinal herbs: thyme, lavender, yarrow (also called woundwort), horehound, feverfew, echinacea (a favorite Indian remedy for colds)

• Tea herbs: mint, beebalm, lemon balm, catnip

• Culinary herbs: sage, thyme, dill, horseradish, mustard, rosemary

• Housekeeping herbs: southernwood, santolina, and lavender (repel moths), tansy and pennyroyal (repel fleas), mint (repel mice), bay (keep weevils out of flour and grains), soapwort (wash fabric), lemon balm (polish furniture), sorrel (polish copper)

• Insect repellent: catnip, pennyroyal, basil

Read more about Laura’s life:

Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder
, by John E. Miller
The Little House Books
, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Horseradish, grated and pounded, makes a warming poultice. Eaten, it is a spur to digestion.

—A DICTIONARY OF EVERY-DAY WANTS, BY A. E. YOUMAN,

M.D., 1878

FEBRUARY 8

Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, & then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird’s Nest; & then everybody laughed again; & then I went to bed.

—DYLAN THOMAS, A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES

Bleeding Hearts
: About China’s Books

Some of the China Bayles mysteries are related to seasonal events and holidays.
Bleeding Hearts
, the fourteenth novel in the series, is set in February, around Valentine’s Day. For the signature herbs, I usually try to choose herbs that China can grow in her Texas garden, but the bleeding heart (
Dicentra sp.
), was such a natural for this book that I found ways to use it. The story is about romantic longing, romance gone wrong, and desire that ends in death—in other words, bleeding hearts.

Bleeding heart is a shade-loving perennial herb, native to the Orient and happiest in cool, moist woodlands (not many of those around Pecan Springs!). The plant was said to be related to the
Papaveraceae
family (which also includes the opium poppy, from which morphine is derived), and has several cousins with such descriptive names as Mary’s heart, golden eardrops, and Dutchman’s breeches. They share a unique blossom shaped like a dangling red, pink, or white heart; in some, the darker inner petals give the appearance of drops of blood.

In William Cook’s
The Physiomedical Dispensatory
(1869), bleeding heart is described as a useful medicinal herb. Topically, it was employed in a poultice to treat toothache and other pain. Taken internally, it treated headache, menstrual disorders, Parkinson’s disease, and rheumatism. In Chinese medicine, where it is called
yan hu suo
, it is prescribed as an antidepressant and sedative, and used to treat tremors and lower blood pressure. Dutchman’s-breeches (
Dicentra cucullaria
), was used by Menominee Indians as a love charm. The blossom was thrown by a young man at the girl he fancied; if it hit her, she was bound to fall in love with him. If she hesitated, he chewed the plant’s root and then breathed on her, which was bound to win her over. (The literature doesn’t tell us whether this worked for women as well as men.)

Bleeding Hearts is also the name of a traditional quilt pattern, which is the theme of the first quilt show put on by the Pecan Springs Scrappers (Ruby’s quilt guild). Ruby and I will let you guess how this figures in the plot.

Read more about bleeding heart:

Hedgemaids and Fairy Candles: The Lives and Lore of North American Wildflowers
, by Jack Sanders

Bleeding Hearts: A China Bayles Mystery
, by Susan Wittig Albert

FEBRUARY 9

Today is the feast day of St. Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists. It is also (somebody had a sense of humor here) National Toothache Day.

Wash your Mouth every Morning with Juice of Limons, mix’d with a little Brandy; and afterwards rub your Teeth with a Sage-Leaf, and wash your Teeth after Meat with Rosemary Water mix’d with Brandy.

—DR. WILLIAM SALMON, 1710

Herbs for the Teeth?

You bet. Here’s Hippocrates’ recipe for good dental hygiene, written in the third century BCE: “Clean teeth with ball of wool dipped in honey and rinse with a teaspoon of dill seed boiled in one-half cup of white wine.”

In the Middle Ages, people cleaned their teeth by chewing the roots of marshmallow, licorice, alfalfa, and horseradish. For infections, they chewed sage and thyme leaves, both of which have antibiotic properties. After the spice trade made it available, clove oil, a potent topical analgesic, became popular.

In America, the Plains Indians chewed the fresh leaves of echinacea to relieve toothache; the juice produced such a numbing effect that the herb was also called the toothache plant. The Comanches chewed the bark and roots of the prickly ash (
Zanthoxylum americanum
), and called it the toothache tree. To clean the teeth, Native Americans chewed twigs of bay, eucalyptus, oak, fir, and juniper. Dogwood was a favorite toothpick.

To brighten their smiles, American colonists rubbed on a mixture of ground charcoal, honey, rosemary, and oil of cloves. Burnt toast mixed with oil of cloves was another favorite. And strawberries (mildly acidic, with a variety of medicinal uses) were mashed and rubbed onto the teeth.

HERBAL MOUTH RINSE

This rinse tastes good and contains several antiseptic compounds to help prevent infection and cleanse your mouth.

1 tablespoon each of dried sage, thyme, eucalyptus,
rosemary, dried lemon zest
1 cup brandy or vodka
1 cup distilled water with ½ teaspoon vanilla

In a jar with a lid, place the dried herbs and pour the brandy over them. Cover and set aside for two weeks, shaking occasionally. Strain, add water and vanilla, and stir. To use, pour a few tablespoons into a glass, swish in the mouth, and spit.

Read more about natural dental care, including the use of herbs:

Healthy Mouth, Healthy Body
, by Victor Zeines

FEBRUARY 10

February is National Heart Month. February’s Theme Garden: A Garden of the Heart.

Let my beloved come into the garden, and eat the pleasant fruits. . . .
—THE SONG OF SOLOMON

A Garden of the Heart

Gardens have been a natural trysting place for lovers since the Garden of Eden. To capture this beautiful idea in a theme garden, you might construct something elaborate, with a shaded pavilion, an ornamental pool, bowers of graceful vines, banks of fragrant lilies, and beds of dreamy flowers.