Eleanor Perenyi on lovage

Franz Kohler c.1887

Instead of a poignant comment on the changing seasons and cycle of life, here, in the last of my series of excerpts from Eleanor Perenyi's book, Green Thoughts, is a little something about lovage:

People who have lovage are wonderfully generous about giving hunks of it away, and once you have acquired it, you see why. Full grown, it is five feet tall, self-sows liberally if the birds don't get the seeds first, doesn't mind shade, is unkillable. Nobody needs as much lovage as, inevitably in a year or two, he has. It is true that it smells and tastes like celery, but it can't be eaten like celery--the flavor is too strong and the stalks are tough. A few leaves added to a soup or stew are sufficient to impart a celery flavor, and I prefer it to celery in a court bouillon. A friend of mine devours the leaves raw on sliced tomatoes in a sandwich. I keep it because I have it (it was, of course, a present), but given the amount I use in relation to the colossal size, I can't call it an essential herb.

We can call her an essential writer though. Many thanks, and bon voyage, Baroness Perenyi.

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Eleanor Perenyi on herb farms

Borage, a Jupiterian herb

Photo credit: Jengod

You've done it, I've done it--the over-buying of herbs. Eleanor Perenyi comments, in the fourth of a series of excerpts from Green Thoughts (1981):

My corner of New England happens to be well endowed with herb farms and my will power easily sapped by the sight of plants for sale. Surely a gold-leaved marjoram wouldn't be amiss? What about a Lavandula viris from the Canary Islands? And inevitably the car fills up with plants that will turn out to be too large, too small, or simply not as interesting as their history and provenance have made them sound. There is, I find, that drawback to herbs. No other class of plant bears such a weight of myth and symbolism, and it can be oversold. For me there comes a time when it isn't enough to know that a plant was sacred to Jupiter, used to ward off snakes, a symbol of loyalty or mentioned by Theophrastus, when all it looks like is a not very exciting wild flower/weed.

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Eleanor Perenyi on mint

Photo credit: Gogo

Eleanor Perenyi wrote about her gardens in a way that commanded respect. Many of us worship at the shrine of her collected garden essays, Green Thoughts (1981), and I felt a personal pang at the passing of the author in May.

Margalit Fox captured her well in a delicate New York Times obituary. My own memorial to Baroness Perenyi will be a series of excerpts from Green Thoughts.

Here she speaks about her mint bed:

Every garden should have an area that can safely be neglected, and a mint bed is the ideal choice. My unknown mints, fenced in with old boards, get no attention beyond a shovelful of compost now and then. They never have a shadow of a pest or a blight. Once a summer I get down on my knees and trace the stolons that have escaped the fence, ripping them from their moorings and throwing them on the compost heap. As gardening jobs go, this one is a delight. The heavenly smell invades every pore, and if I were the size of a cat I would roll luxuriously in the pile of discards.

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Vote for your favorite summer herb

It's 86 degrees, the end of May--all danger of a late frost is past. Time to plant tender herbs in Zone 7! 

I know I want sweet basil. 

I have five redwood planters that came with the house and they'll be my summer herb garden on the deck, near the kitchen door. One for sweet basil, one for peppermint, one for chocolate mint.

What to grow in the fourth and fifth planters? Our garden is already full of rosemary and lavender. Does anyone go wild for cinnamon basil? Lemon verbena? Maraschino cherry sage? What's your summer can't-live-without-it herb?

Cast your ballots and I'll plant the top two winners!

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