Goodbye, I say to the mother of boys I don't know but my daughter does, after we've discussed the Halloween Party she's having - what time it starts, ends, that sort of thing. And what's your name again? I ask because I hadn't quite caught it the first time. I can tell she's busy putting up pumpkin lights and slicing blood sausage for vampires and ghouls to nibble on. Tansy, she says patiently, but her voice is a little further from the phone as if she was about to put it down. Tansy? Tansy. Like Pansy but not Pansy. Tansy. I don't think I've ever heard it before.
I hang up and drive to the local shops to buy provisions and have a coffee. Scott who sells heritage tomato plants and organic herbs and flowers is in the little lane between one shop and the next. My heritage tomato plants are already in the ground at home - one of them will produce tomatoes which are black inside, and another will produce tomatoes the colour of chocolate - but I need some other plants to fill my small dug-over beds: daisies, herbs, anything really. I rummage among the pots and pull one out. What's this? Pyrethrum - it's a natural insecticide. And this? Ants hate it - plant it around your house and the ants skedaddle. What's it called? Tansy.
I bought two.
3 comments:
I used to have an extensive herb garden and was told that Tansy was one of the 'bitter herbs' mentioned in the bible in relation to passover. Don't know how true that was. I like garden stories. Tansy is a lovely name :-)
Interesting artandmylife... you wonder why you'd call a child after a 'bitter' herb, though? Is it a way of arming her against what life throws up? Then again, one take on the origin of my name is bitterness. My friend Rina tells me it comes from myrrh: 'myrrh is mine its bitter perfume' and all that. Interesting, too, that Tansy sounds like 'ants' - which makes me wonder if its anti-ant power is more in the construction of its name? We have ants and I have planted the Tansy outside our kitchen window, so we'll soon see what it can do ...
Perhaps if you write "tansy" in itsy weeny writing, all around the house, the ants will stay away? :)
Post a Comment