Although Marash Girl has yet been able to get her mint to grow wild, she has, thanks to Helene, been able to grow a tamer variety of mint in a big old galvanized tub right outside her kitchen door -- her kitchen garden, as it were. Gathering that mint this year before the frost hit brought to mind the mint that grew rampant on the hillside at her childhood home, the hot anoukh that her mother prepared whenever anyone in the family fell ill, and what she (Marash Girl) found on the day that her father passed away . . . there arranged over the surface of the bed in the guest bedroom was his last harvest of mint, carefully spread out to dry on opened brown paper grocery bags, enough mint to last, as it turned out, his lifetime.
i remember that mint patch, very well. so well, that when i purchased an half acre in germantown, tn. and constructed a grape arbor whose arched trellis was the gateway to the garden, my first born, jordan planted a mint patch, and a basil patch, all different kinds. they were prolific, and early in the morning when i would stroll in my garden, my son, would go straight to his mint patch, inspecting and smelling his envelope of time.
ReplyDeleteTouching post, Marash Girl.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was living in New Orleans, my mint tried to take over my whole yard! Now that I'm in central NY, I can't seem to get it to grow at all! :( I used to get a chuckle out of when I went to summer camp as a kid in NH - there was a trench alongside the main road coming into the camp that ran along the softball field, so I was always eating the mint while playing. The other kids thought I was crazy and eating weeds. ;)
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