The quaint and characteristic muddle of smells has stayed with me since the earliest of days. I can look back down the years and remember visits to great aunt Violet (my grandmother’s sister): first as duty visits with my mother and then more eager and self-willed visits on my own. I can well recall her face and details of the tiny cottage and surrounding garden, but it is the smells stay in my memory.
Each beam and hook and cupboard handle in the kitchen held drying herbs and flowers. These were later crumbled into jars and packets and used in cooking or medicinal remedies. Herbs were kept perky in jars of water, ready to be freshly chopped into oils, alcohols or distilled into tinctures. Soaps and lotions, vinegars and essential oils filled cupboards and shelves. Sometimes Violet sold her wares to local shops, and she also had postal enquiries and word-of -mouth recommendations.
Looking back, I suppose Violet was what was once known as a wise woman. Skilled in the use of herbal remedies and with wondrous gardening skills, she was treated by some as a life saver and by others with some suspicion and even derision. There was, indeed, a whiff of magic about her.
Working in the garden, Violet had the company of a robin who often sang for her, and a little owl who sometimes surveyed her work from a distant fence. These were her regulars but there were many passers-by who relished the banquet of seed heads and insects. There were foxes too, and probably other creatures I never even noticed. At certain times of the year we could sometimes hear gun shots. All the birds immediately fled, and Violet and I preferred to be indoors away from the ugly noises. We did the same when mounted hunters and dogs galloped close by.
On my visits we gathered herbs Violet needed and she tried to teach me their names and uses: lavender and thyme stand out. Violet grew thyme in crevices in the stone walls and sprawling over rocks and creeping between paving stones. Each one had tiny flowers and tantalizing flavours.
As Violet explained (she was such a patient person):
If you only remember one herb, it must be thyme. With thyme you can ease bad coughs and sore throats. And thyme will help with mouth infections too.
She showed me her bottles of thyme mouthwash and sticky cough linctus on the medicine shelves.
If you add it to food it gives a lovely flavor to the dish and helps you to digest the food. It’s a good all rounder is thyme. And the bees love it too. People used to burn it to make their homes smell nice and to protect themselves.
The visits to Violet stopped abruptly. She had died in her garden. Much later, I learned that it had been a ‘hunting accident’ and she had been inadvertently shot whilst trying to warn off her foxes. I’ve grown thyme ever since, in her memory. It may even protect me.
