Herbs and the Earth by Henry Beston

Author:Henry Beston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: David R. Godine
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Not from the slopes of the Mediterranean littoral, but from the mountains and the plateaus above comes this herb to our gardens, its late Latin and botanical name Levisticum being an uncouth corruption of Liguria. Rising in the spring from a very vital and hardy root, it swiftly forms a clump about a foot high of rounded stalks and shining dark green leaves with something of the look and a good deal of the taste of a smooth and handsome Celery. Its stalks thus placed, its first leaves opened, the herb rushes from the ground, the fine hollow columns rising five and six feet high and taking the leaves with them, the great umbels of pollen-yellow florets crowning all. Once used in cookery and domestic medicine, the umbel fruits are now largely neglected, but the young shoots, boiled up in a broth, add to it an interesting flavor of Celery together with Celery seed. The herb likes a situation in rich soil which retains a proper dampness. Hardy as an oak, vigorous in growth, and interesting to the eye, a clump of Lovage is a fine note among the herbs.

I am often in the garden in the very early morning, for I like the quiet, the heavy dew as yet ungathered from the leaves, the quality of the early light, and the smell of earth soon to be mingled with an occasional clean pungency of smoke from the great kitchen chimney. As the garden begins to gather the eastern light, I often come to think that one of the most beautiful and subtle things in nature is the variation of the color green. There are few things which have a quieter integrity of beauty than the green harmonies of leaves. For some are dark and shining like the Lovage, others pale, each green and each surface making its own byplay with the light; and the greens themselves are rich in variation, ranging from an almost pure blue to yellow. To see both colors upon one plant is commonplace, for the new growth of bluegreen plants is usually a yellow-green. It is by such an economy of means, by such contrasts and transitions that nature varies the entire surface of a world. The silvered darkness of Rue, the fresh green of Basil, and the yellow-green of Costmary are a microcosm of forest and plain, holding the world in a garden as one might hold a leaf in the hollow of a hand.

I once heard from a window on a London street a woman singing the Lavender call. It was not the pretty song so often seen in children’s books of music, but another complete and poignant melody, and once and twice and then far-off it rose, touching the heart with its human beauty before it dissolved away into the morning. Something in the soil and climate of southern England, something in the English character, have made Lavender their own, and with it there will always be a thought of its

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