Rosemary

Thursday, 4 November 2010

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Rosmarinus officinalis. Rosmarin in German.

My favourite rosemary is the one I pick from the straggly shrub growing in my mother’s hillside garden; totally neglected, this poor specimen receives neither water nor fertiliser, and not much attention. Tied up with old pantyhose on an occasion when we both had a gardening attack and swept through the clay-riddled landscape with meticulous combs, the rosemary bush is, still, not much of a bush. Spindly, fragile, hardly any fresh growth. 

Yet its leaf, oh, its leaf. It’s amazing what one finds in the most unexpected places.

When it has dried in the brown paper bags that I make sure not to fill too generously, my mother’s derelict resident gives pleasure to the senses; its smell when rubbed between my fingers rises into my nostrils with an intensity and ferociousness of something that has long been wanting to break out. Camphorous yet sweet. Pungent yet subtle.It is simply uplifting.

Where I used to add commercial bubble bath or relaxation-promising honey &milk bath products, I now add nothing but water, hot and fresh, as well as sprigs of my mother’s rosemary. There is nothing quite like it. You come out feeling rejuvenated, healthy and brilliant.

I also make a tisane from it; good for early morning starts when sleep will just not leave my body.

Of course, I am not the first to discover the secrets of rosemary. People have been healing with it, flavouring with it, infusing with it and communing with it for centuries.

Two important women endorsed the rosemary shrub: The Virgin Mary herself recognised it as a sturdy enough plant to weather the weight of her heavy, rain-drenched cloak, which needed drying (she was obviously not in my mother’s garden at the time). When she removed the blue cloak, its colour had infused the formerly white flowers of the shrub and turned them into its own shade.

Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, fertility and sexual love, is said to have arisen out of the roaring sea with rosemary sprigs clinging to her body. The herb is hence often associated with her, and also, with beauty, fertility and sexual love. Perhaps that’s why my mother’s unkempt rosemary shrub has such potency and resilience; it’s as though the whole plant puts its energy and resources into a single outcome – the crowning leaves and blossoms with their immense power.

I think the camphor in its veins prompted people from all corners of the world to use rosemary for remembering. Its smell awakens; the Ancient Greeks wore garlands of rosemary on their heads to boost memory. In Europe and here, in Australia, rosemary is commonly seen at funerals, where a sprig is thrown into the grave so that those left behind may not forget the person they bury. Lest we forget.

But my favourite use of this herb, aside from its many, many uses in cookery, stems from Medieval times where newly wed couples would plant a shrub of rosemary on their wedding day as a symbol of faith in their love; if the shrub grew with vigour and life, so too would their union.

And so, I plant a rosemary bush here, today. And hope that it, and this, grows and grows.