Halloween By Turnip Light

How strange that we celebrate Halloween on the 31st of October in the southern hemisphere when we enter the sunniest time of the year, the time when crops are burgeoning. I tried to initiate a 'Halloween in Oz' celebration on May 31st for several years but running against the trend was a lost cause. American Halloween was splashed everywhere. But all praise to America and the Pennsylvanian Dutch who have kept the celebration so vibrant.

Now is a good time to look back and remember Halloween's history which began in Europe with the cyclical Celtic year and the celebration of Samhain. With the harvests over and facing an uncertain future in which a long winter could cause many deaths if food supples ran out, Samhain (pronounced sow-an) was a day of mixed emotions. Samhain roughly translated means 'summer's end' and it marked the end of the months of light. It was also symbolically the death of the lusty Green Man of the verdant summer woods, losing in battle to the ruler of winter. Last harvests were stored, cattle intended for winter food were slaughtered, bonfires lit and the skeletons of slaughtered beasts thrown upon the fires. It was a time for a last feasting.

It was also a time to remember lost ones, a time when for a single night the veil between the living and the afterworld thinned and the dead might contact their loved ones. In Ireland burial mounds were lit and food and drink were provided for those returning. In both Scotland and Ireland a candle or lantern was placed in a western window as a guide and welcome. Malevolent spirits, which were equally free to cross the boundary, were frightened away with swede turnips, variously also known also as rutabagas and mangelwurzels, hollowed out and carved into fearful faces then lit with a candle. This practice still persists at Richterwil on Lake Geneva.

 On the night when the veils thinned, there was a widespread belief that it was the best time of the year to carry out divination. Scrying and Tarot card readings became popular activities. This degenerated at many parties into games designed to predict the identity of a new lover or a future husband, often involving the fruits of the season such as chestnuts and apples. But with the first cockcrow, all festivities ceased and the dead were compelled to depart for another year.

 Samhain was overlaid in the medieval period by the three day Christian festival of All Hallows Eve (a name gradually changed to 'Halloween'), All Saint's Day, and then All Souls. All Hallows referred to the blessed dead or hallowed dead. While the saints were remembered on the first two days, the souls of all good people who had passed beyond earthly life became the focus of All Souls. Like many attempts to destroy older beliefs and festivals, the ancient ways survived. After all, they had deep meaning for those who celebrated the Celtic Samhain and lived close to the earth. In Germany Halloween was known as Walpurgisnacht, a rather ominous name much celebrated in 19th and 20th century Gothic literature.

Two herbs are particularly associated with Halloween and both are under the dominion of the European goddess Holle (Hulda), guardian of the dead and messenger between the living and the dead. Both elderberry and holly are associated with her in Europe and also in Pennsylvania. She later became caricatured as the black witch of the modern Halloween. It was also said that the Devil picked the fruits of the deadly henbane (pictured) on the night of Halloween in France while elsewhere it was said he spat on the last blackberries so that they were not fit to eat.

Winter and summer squash are native to America. Pumpkins with their bright orange colour, larger size, and easy-to-grow habits took over from the turnip for carving scary faces to be lit by flickering candles. Orange and black have long been the colours of Halloween, perhaps a reflection of the ancient Celtic bonfires in the midnight black skies. But don't mention using a pumpkin for such wasteful purposes in Provence. My Provençal friends were horrified. What, destroy a delicious and undoubtedly beautiful deep red 'Rouge d'Etampe' pumpkin! Are you mad? Waste good food! I only raised the topic once. Never again.

 In that most French of all American cities, my beloved New Orleans, all things Goth run just below the surface and it is a popular place for Halloween celebrations. But in the cemeteries where the dead are buried above ground to escape the perilously high water table, you will see the old ways enacted as families remember their loved ones, dining with the dead, lighting candles and laying beautiful wreaths of immortelles (the French word for everlasting flowers). The day is celebrated as 'Touissant', the French All Hallows.

No mention of the day of the dead is complete without the thousands of years old Mexican Dia de los Muertos which was based on very similar beliefs in some respects to the Celts and was truly a celebration of those who had died as well as of a happy expectation of the afterlife. The colonial Spanish overlaid the day with the Catholic festival of All Hallows and today the festival is a blend of the old ways and the new. As in Greece, the cheerful marigold has become the symbol of the dead. In Greece it is the orange calendula or pot marigold (itself a corruption of a medieval name 'Mary's Gold' in honour of the Virgin Mary) while in Mexico it is the deep gold or orange flowered Tagetes.  

All of which is the long way round to say that it feels strange to be celebrating Halloween on such a hot and sunny day.

Despite which, Happy Halloween!

Bye from Oz

Bottling The Spring Garden

Everyone has a particularly soft spot for some types of flowers. Honeysuckle, clove pinks, sweet violets, jasmine and heritage roses are my greatest personal weaknesses so the spring has me wandering around the garden in a daze, transfixed by one picture perfect gorgeously fragrant flower after the other and of course photographing incessantly.

The weird climate-changed weather we are now regularly experiencing here managed to bring all my greatest favourites out together instead of in their more or less orderly sequence. It is as if all the flowers of spring had rehearsed a grand performance. Huge bushes of Belle Etoile and Mexican philadelphus are in full flower together with shrubs of ripe apricot scented Osmanthus x  fragrans. Cascading 'Gold Flame', 'English' (pictured), 'Firecracker', 'Halliana' and 'Giant Burmese' honeysuckles are dripping with nectar and fragrance (and driving our native honeyeater birds into a frenzy).

Climbing roses such as my much loved 1830s large double white Noisette 'Lamarque', softest apricot Noisette 'Crepuscule', milk white 'Autumnalis' and palest creamy lemon 'Claire Jacquier' are proving their Musk Rose ancestry by pouring forth the sweetest fragrance, 'Lamarque' with a decidedly lemon twist to its scent. The Tea roses are laden with large - and of course tea scented (the coolest of all rose fragrances) - blooms And then there are the Damasks and Gallicas and Centifolias and Mosses and Albas and David Austins and species roses and ... No, that way lies madness! We are also being drenched with spices from our big collection of clove pinks and I won't even mention the ancient Poet's Jasmine which has been growing in this old garden for sixty years.

It's such a delicious time of the year. If only the scent could be bottled. No-one does it better than nature. But if you are looking for perfume that comes nearest of all to these spring garden scents, among my favourites are the Durance fragrances from Provence. Their rose, lemon verbena (Verveine), lavender and jasmine single fragrance eau de toilette are so pure and true to scent, and I love Floris of London, particularly their Rose Geranium, Lily of the Valley, and Carnation fragrances. Don't store them indefinitely though. Indulge. These are so fresh they are to be enjoyed. Scent should always be stored capped and in a cool place. The high sweet notes are the first to be lost once the bottle is opened (a spray cap helps to hold the fragrance) but the more empty the bottle the more the high notes are lost and the perfume is subtly changed. Heavy sexy perfumes belong to the night and can easily overpower. The worst that can happen with these delightful fresh fragrances is a visit from a puzzled bee or a visitor to the garden wandering in circles to track down that fabulous fragrance.

Green Magic Protection

A little help in the garden can only be a good thing! So I've added lots of herbs associated with magical protection to our garden over the years, particularly the ancient Celtic plants of magic. Superstitious? Not that you'd notice - blame a Welsh and Irish background.

 Actually you can't even pass the entrance to Honeysuckle Cottage without brushing by a large pink flowered English honeysuckle Lonicera periclymenum with its gorgeous fragrance (have you noticed how strong and sweet its fragrance is at dusk compared with the daytime?) and also the huge glossy leaved Giant Burmese honeysuckle L. hildenbrandiana with 15 cm long, wonderfully scented, cream flowers. Honeysuckle is above all the herb of prosperity and of magical healing. For a positive turn in your finances, surround a green candle with a wreath of honeysuckle and light the candle. It's always worth a try (but like all lighted candles don't leave it unattended). The old magical healing usage involved making a woven garland (weaving increases the magic) of the leafy green stems and passing it down the body from  head to toes three times before cutting the garland into nine pieces and burning them in a fire.

Wander into the Secret Garden and you will encounter pots of lavender once used in purification magic and to see ghosts, mugwort (try it dried in sleep pillows for some very exciting technicolor dreams, particularly if combined with yarrow Achillea millefolium), sweet woodruff which is considered to be a good herb to carry in your pocket if you are making a fresh start, pots of sage which was used to promote health and well being, to recognise your true partner, and to help attract prosperity, origanums which are said to be strong protectors when made into an infusion with rosemary and mint and sprinkled around the house, masses of different clove pinks for which I have a passion and are considered very protective in magic, and a bush of sweet myrtle for good luck and to attract and hold love. Wild primroses Primula vulgaris are growing in shady moist areas of the Secret Garden and were considered to be very strongly protective in ancient magic.

The gardens beyond are filled with the old heritage roses including big old Tea Rose bushes that are never out of flower for us, and the wonderfully old fashioned looking and very fragrant David Austin roses. Roses are of course associated with love and love potions but they were also used for clairvoyance (in a fragrant tea). 

A little further down the path a huge hawthorn tree covers with flowers like snow in spring and the noise of overenthusiastic nectar gathering bees is almost deafening. In magic it was considered a powerful herb of happiness. But in much of England you will be warned not to sleep under a solitary tree, and to walk between two trees growing close together (as they do on Glastonbury Tor in Somerset) is to enter a portal into the realm of fairies and possibly never return.

 Beside the hawthorn is one of a number of elderberry trees Sambucus nigra, including the very pretty variegated and golden forms, which are planted throughout the garden. The branch of an elder was often used to make a magic wand. The tree is said to be inhabited by Mother Elder, the spirit of the elder, and the old belief always held that bushes should never be harvested for their lacy white flowers (which make delicious fritters and elderflower 'champagne') or berries (which make a decidedly good imitation of port wine), or cuttings taken, without asking permission of Mother Elder - a counsel we follow very carefully here. It was said that cutting an elder down would result in your house burning, and making making a cradle with the wood would cause the baby to become ill or have it replaced with a changeling. Beyond the elder lies a shady bank of sweet violets which are said to magically attract faithful love and bluebells (the province of fairies and not to be wandered through for fear of being abducted into their world).

 On our very sunny northern slope great clumps of various wormwoods thrive adding silver and sparkle to the terraces of herbs With Halloween about to happen, it is well worth remembering that wormwood was traditionally thrown on fires to protect from dangerous spirits.

 All sorts of thymes grow there. The leaves were crushed and the scent inhaled to promote inspiration and courage, focus the brain, and dispel melancholy. It was also used in magical potions to see fairies and in purification. (If you are having nightmares consider a sleep pillow containing thyme, lemon verbena, and lavender.)

 Through the herb gardens are plants of the grey woolly mullein, once considered to be the source of witch's broomsticks, but in the ancient magic believed to protect against wild animals. And we need it. We may not have lions and tigers but Australia's long drought has driven the swamp wallaby across the range to us and it much prefers midnight feasting on our delicious plants to tough dry native vegetation. The possums have a penchant for rose flowers and privet berries, producing as a by-product a near unremovable staining combination, a wombat has a burrow large enough for a woolly mammoth (well, a slight exaggeration), and even echidnas dine delicately, rolling their spiny little bodies up defensively if we pass too close to the shrubs they shelter beneath. Thankfully most of these animals dislike strongly scented herbs and tend to stay towards the bottom of the property. On the other hand the bower birds, rosella and king parrots, and the wonga pigeons are anything but deterred from our fruit trees including the apples (used in healing and love).  

To the east lies a large oak tree and a large 7 m high Bay tree. The oak tree is said to possess the greatest powers in ancient magic and is associated with protection and long life. The bay tree had many powers including healing, clairvoyance, purification and protection. Carrying the fresh leaves was considered to guarantee success.  Behind our nursery shop 'The Stillroom' grows a large juniper which is said to be a powerful protector against theft as well as a general herb of protection. Periwinkle wreaths its way as a groundcover in the same area, another herb of protection, and in the shade angelica flourishes, said to protect against infection and to bestow serenity. 

But then as I said I'm not really superstitious.

 Bye from Oz

 PS Do check out my book 'In A Unicorn's Garden: Recreating the mystery and magic of medieval gardens' if this posting is of interest to you. It is a hardback, gorgeously illustrated, 288 pp, published by Murdoch Books and is available from most online book stores.

 

Scarecrows and Roses

The third weekend in October brings a dilemma here. The small but fashionable village below us on our mountain holds its annual Scarecrow Festival while we are holding the last weekend of our Festival of Fragrance. We all juggle lunch times at Honeysuckle Cottage so that we can be part of both festivals. Kurrajong Village, which is an exceptionally photogenic village on the edge of the range, with antique shops, lolly shops, sensible shops and a real village feel, not to mention two great restaurants, is crowded for the weekend with traffic barely managing 5 km/hr and scarecrows sprout from everywhere including surrounding farms. We created scarecrows for several years including an exceedingly elegant colonial lady and a disreputable pumpkin headed man and arranged them at the entrance to the nursery. But so many passing drivers were startled into near accidents that we gave up.

The main event is in the village park. This time misty rain was falling for much of the day getting heavier as the afternoon wore on but no-one seemed deterred. A best dressed dog competition was not to be missed. A small poodle in a pink ballet dress performed a graceful little number, whirling around on neat paws and walked away with a prize. A large boxer dog looked suitably embarrassed in satin boxer shorts with a pair of boxing gloves slung around his neck, a Great Dane played horse to a scaled down scarecrow... but perhaps a discreet veil should be drawn on the rest. Between damp coats, dissolving makeup and dripping outfits I'm sure they would rather forget about the whole thing.

Meanwhile back at Honeysuckle Cottage we continued to dispense complimentary herb and cheese scones, coffees and teas, hand out welcoming tussie mussies, give talks, conduct garden walks, distribute newsletters and give garden advice until it was almost too dark to see and rain had set in. The fragrance of honeysuckle, heritage roses and thousands of herbs was still fresh and sweet on the air after weeks of totally unseasonal wind and heat. We retired to put our feet up with hot coffee and a batch of banana and honey muffins from the oven. We probably looked like the scarecrows with dripping hair and sagging shirts but on the whole I think the dogs, the scarecrows and their admirers, and the visitors to our fragrance festival all voted it a great day.

You may enjoy my book on medieval gardens and how to create them: 'In A Unicorn's Garden' (Murdoch Books). If so please check it out on Amazon.com or the UK Amazon site. Bye from Oz.