Garden Natterings

Been working on several more herb posts; mostly, though, I've been outside working in the garden, the formal one out back which is terribly overgrown, since due to a kitten explosion taking all my energy the poor thing was pretty much abandoned last year. The only thing I did plant, a pair of containers of sweet peas and convolvulus (with bamboo pyramids), was abruptly ripped up by my mother the first week of September, a good month and a half before the first frost, with no warning, no explanation, and no mention, even, after the fact, like she expected me to think it just disappeared. Or it had never existed, maybe?

So I've been out getting my hands dirty, mother or no; and I've been putting in some new plants, here and there. I have planted the little violas, heartsease, as they're called, which love to cross-pollinate and then self-seed in that garden, leading to all kinds of interesting new colors (though they do eventually tend to revert to the johnny-jump-up form); and yesterday I got some snapdragons, which, so the reference books say, are good for turning curses back on the one(s) who sent them.

And I bought some monkshood, also known as wolfsbane, with its poisonous root; I was looking for delphinium, which I love and which thrive, the first year anyway, but that was what I found, and I'll not complain.

So I've been researching, and thinking, and wondering; I took a drive yesterday to an herb farm that's a bit out of the way looking for agrimony, which they didn't have. And today I found myself standing out there, in the rain, looking at it all, figuring out what was next. And I thought: I'm officially obsessed with gardening again, like I had been several years back. And that's okay.

I've downloaded a pdf (damned things) of Culpeper's Herbal, that work from the 17th century by the guy over there on the right, Nicholas Culpeper. It's a rotten format, a book on the computer; and the urge has crossed my mind, more than once, to make my own version, hand-lettering the entries in calligraphy, painting pictures of the plants myself and tipping them in, and binding the whole thing up in say green leather. I could do it, with a little bit of research on bookbinding; and I could do it up like a grimoire, almost. It should, I think, be treated like that, with the respect it deserves. And I would certainly learn about herbs. It would take a long time to make, though, and be quite a commitment.

It's tempting, though.