Lifescapes

June Book Update

I've just finished reviewing the copyedited "first pass" pages for my Garden Club mystery series--this one is called The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose, due out on September 4. I have a few ARCs (advance reading copies) left. If you're a reviewer and/or book or garden blogger and would like to have a review copy of this book, email me at susan at susanalbert dot com. Let me know where you're likely to place your review(s) and be sure to include your mailing address so I can pop your book in the mail.

I'm working now on the 2013 Garden Club mystery: The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star. Never heard of a Texas star? Maybe you know it by its "real" name: Hibiscus coccineus.

My article on native medicinals of the Southwest is the cover article for the Summer issue of Wildflower Magazine. You can read it in the online version. 

Works in progress: my book on Rose Wilder Lane and Laura Ingalls Wilder, still in the proposal stage and out for editorial review; and Widow's Tears, the 21st (gasp!) book in the China Bayles series, to be published in April 2013. The manuscript of Widow's Tears is finished and on its way through the various stages of becoming a book.

My thanks to the Herb Society of America for naming me its Honorary President for 2012-2014!

Reading note: You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.--C.S. Lewis

Monarda: In bloom this week

 

For the past couple of weeks, our native monarda (Monarda citriodora, or lemon mint) has been spreading our meadows with a lovely purple blanket. The genus was named in honor of Nicolas Monardes, a 16th century Spanish botanist who never made it to the New World, but established a botanical garden in Seville where he cultivated specimens and studied the effects of medicinal plants imported from the Americas. Citriodora comes from the Latin citrus, plus odoro--which pretty much describes its sour-lemon odor. It is also called horsemint, not because it has anything to do with horses, but because "horse" was used to describe something larger than expected--as in the word horseradish, an unexpectedly large radish. The monardas belong to the mint family (they have the same square stem) and are larger and taller than most mints: hence horsemint. That's one theory, anyway--makes sense to me.

[Update 6/9/12: Maud Grieve, writing in A Modern Herbal, 1931, says that the prefix "horse" in horseradish comes from the idea of "coarse," and compares it--interestingly--to horsemint: "The popular English name, Horseradish, means a coarse radish, to distinguish it from the edible radish (R. sativus), the prefix 'Horse' being often used thus, comp. Horse-Mint, Horse Chestnut."]

The monardas have many uses. The leaves and stems, brewed, makes a decent tea (although a little resinous for my taste). If you crush the leaves and rub them on you, the bugs will leave you alone. The plant is rich in the antiseptic chemical thymol, and the Plains Indians used it as a wound poultice and a gargle (to treat mouth/throat infections), as well as a tea to treat fever and headaches. I've seen a soap made from it, and I have read that it is used in perfumes.

And monarda is decorative. Dried, in the winter, I always have a bouquet of it on my kitchen windowsill, with dried grasses and pretty dried seed pods. Years ago, when I was making herbal wreaths to sell, I gathered baskets of it, hung it to dry, and used it as a major floral component of each wreath. Right now, though, it's beautiful fresh--and lovely in the meadows, which are purple, purple, purple, perhaps the prettiest color in nature.

Reading Notes. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.--Shug, in The Color Purple, by Alice Walker