Weeds are a really challenging problem. I spend considerable time pulling them, digging, them, and sorting them.Generally speaking, the b
12.06.2023 - 01:00 / gardenerspath.com / Lynne Jaques
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme: A Love StoryAre you going to Scarborough Fair?Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,Remember me to one who lives there,She once was a true love of mine.
So begins the old Simon and Garfunkel song “Scarborough Fair,” borrowed from the Elizabethans, and a fine lot they were. What seems on the surface to be a perfectly innocent folk song turns out to be riddle of devilish complexity. Nevertheless, we as herbalists are in a prime position to figure it out.
Let’s reconstruct:
First, the hero of the song gets a third party to take a lengthy message to his ex-lover who lives in another town. In this message, he instructs her to perform 5 impossible tasks as prerequisites to getting him back – everything from sewing a shirt with no seams to finding him some land between the sand and the sea.
So much for the idea that this is a straightforward love song. Have her make me a cambric shirt, indeed. Does he love her, or is he kissing her off?
Pondering this question, the modern herbalist noticed that in between all this dictatorial preaching was the refrain, “parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.” Aha! Perhaps there is the clue to his meaning.
Here’s how the song ends:
If she tells me she can’t, I’ll reply,Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,Let me know that at least she will try,And then she’ll be a true love of mine.
Love imposes impossible tasks,Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,Though not more than any heart asks,And I must know she’s a true love of mine.
Dear, when thou hast finished thy task,Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,Come to me, my hand for to ask,For then thou art a true love of mine.
In short, it seems like all she has to do if she wants him back is perform a few garden-variety, herculean tasks
Weeds are a really challenging problem. I spend considerable time pulling them, digging, them, and sorting them.Generally speaking, the b
The day I meet David Godshall, one of the founding members of the progressive landscape architecture firm known as Terremoto, I climb the concrete steps outside his home in East Los Angeles, open a worn hinged gate, and see his garden for the first time. What I find is not quite what I was expecting, yet it makes perfect sense. Rather than the composed plants and austere rigor of the poolside landscaping Terremoto designed for actor Mandy Moore, for example, Godshall’s own garden is a tangle of mostly native and low-water plants, placed in a way that seemed haphazard but that the plants seemed to love. A dirt path is surrounded by bursts of unruly pitcher sage, sprawling California buckwheat, and Ceanothus ‘Ray Hartman’, all flourishing under the canopy of a Western sycamore. Cross-sawn timber planks from fallen local trees that otherwise would’ve been pulped weave through the yard like mini-bridges for his kids to play on. Raised beds tumble down the slope. A fashionable composter (yes, there is such a thing) sits under the eaves of a house that’s been painted black. Meanwhile, in one corner, a clawfoot cast- iron bathtub sits on a humble wood-plank base. This, I find out later, is where Godshall likes to bathe.
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