Scented Treasures

Scented Treasures

As a child, my mother grew great clumps of large violets that bloomed in late April, just in time for filling my May Baskets. I picked the purple or white flowers splashed with purple, and encircled the bouquets with some of their heart-shaped leaves, and stuck them into decorated paper cups. In my heart, I dearly wanted to pluck some of my mother’s primroses so that I could add a little yellow to each basket, but I was forbidden to pick any of those flowers.

On May Day, I snuck over to our neighbor’s house, left a basket on her porch, and rang the doorbell, and hid in her shrubs. This delicious trick, the opposite of Halloween’s begging, was repeated at a few other neighbor’s houses, plus my grandparent’s home and of course, my mother found a basket at her door. Thank goodness, for my mother’s long borders of violet plants that provided generous bouquets, yet I often wondered why those violets had no fragrance.

Once while visiting Tasha in late March and touring her garden, she showed me a patch of small English violets that had emerged from a covering of snow. Unlike my mother’s large plants, these violets grew closer to the earth with smaller leaves.

“When the sun warms their blossoms, they perfume this corner of the garden,” she said.

Back inside her cottage, Tasha gave me a nursery catalog featuring eight or nine varieties English violets with different levels of fragrance. Mirroring her taste in heirloom roses, Tasha had noted the most odiferous of the violets. The catalog listed different colors, red, white, lavender, purple, maroon, and dark purple, and some even had names such as “lamb’s ears” for the tiny white variety. I was enthralled and ordered several violet plants for my garden.

When they arrived, I planted them beneath a forsythia bush, eager for their blossoms to scent the shady space. But while on a walk around our farm pond for the first time, I noticed violets similar to the ones in Tasha’s garden, and when their lavender buds opened, I smelled their sweet violet odor. After talking to my husband, we discerned that the previous owners of our land were of English decent, and Mrs. Wadsworth adored gardening, so most-likely she had planted that bed of violets. Like so many other seasonal details, I called Tasha and told her about the wild planting and because their blossoms had just opened, she could expect her plants to bloom in a couple of weeks.

Slowly, my own bed of violets expanded, and I never walked by it without pausing to burrow my nose into their jewel-like flowers. A few deep breaths would slow my heartbeat, calm my mind and renew my energy. Despite their short stems, I picked tiny bouquets to fill a doll’s teacup so that even when inside, I could inhale their sweet scent. And come early, November, I was delighted to find a few blossoms blooming, a final gift before snow covered my garden.

Now that Tasha has passed away, each spring, my small violets remind me of tender moments spent in her green house and garden; like May Baskets, they were full of wonderful surprises and joy.

Goats and Artistic Cheese

Starting in March, my phone conversations with Tasha often discussed the first snowdrop or crocus to blossom, the return of red-winged blackbirds, or the constant cheeping of spring peepers. As much as we loved the first flowers and flocks of robins, one of the most important markers in the progression of spring was when our goats delivered their kids. Even though we had both kept goats for numerous years, we confessed tidbits of apprehension when we found a doe in labor. Most of the time the births were normal, but now and then, we had to assist the mother as she brought forth twins or triplets. When all the does had birthed their young, our conversations turned to how many kids now scampered in the barn, how well they drank from their bottles, and which female kids would make champion milkers.

 But of course, the spring ritual of goat kids actually began in a different shed where Tasha kept her male goat, nick-named Bucky after Buckminster Fuller, who lived with another goat in a separate shed. While Tasha never accepted my offer to milk her does, she sometimes sent me to fill Bucky’s water bucket and to feed him hay.

During the evening chore time, I would follow Tasha around, assisting in small ways. Milking her does was a cherished task. Her gentle female goats knew who was to be milked first, and without any prodding, the does would walk out of their pen, and jump on the stanchion. They needed no restraint to keep them on the small platform where Tasha stripped them of their milk as they munched on a pan of grain. As soon as one goat was finished, she jumped off, and allowed the next doe, her special moment with Tasha. The only sound was of milk flowing into the metal bucket and the goat’s teeth crunching on her feed. As the Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh wrote, these sounds are the “music of milking”.

Tasha preferred Nubian goats with their floppy ears and broad Roman noses, splashes of vanilla-colored spots shimmering on their brown coats. Nubian does love attention and can be one of the most vocal breeds, bawling about their need for more hay or a small snack from the garden. Because the goats provided a rich manure that Tasha spread on her vegetable and flower garden, so that those plantings yielded bountiful crops, and lush blossoms on her peonies, foxgloves, and numerous roses.

Although I had crafted cheese from cow’s milk for many years, I turned to Tasha for answers about how to perfect my goat cheese. She suggested a French cheesemakers book, The Fabrication of Farmstead Goat Cheese, and also gave me a subscription to Dairy Goat Journal. Tasha also pointed out that cheesemaking is an art that demanded precision, patience, and constant practice. Like the paintings and sketches scattered at the end of her trestle table, Tasha applied these character traits to her simple life and encouraged me to follow her example in whatever artistic pursuit I explored.

The Warmth from Tasha's Fire

Sitting near Tasha’s Fireplace

The thermometer at my barn registered two degrees this morning, a cold temperature for farm, located where the breath of Lake Michigan warms our air. Sunshine shimmers on the paths cut through the many inches of snow that fell last week. Because most of my visits to Tasha took place before my family headed into maple sugaring season, I associate frigid temperatures and mountains of snow with Vermont.

Frosty lace patterns spread across Tasha’s windows, especially in those upstairs bedrooms farther removed from the cook stove and fireplace. Out of doors, each step squeaked on the icy snow when I walked Tasha’s driveway so that I could fetch her mail. Sometimes a fine mist of snow blurred the edges of the wood, limiting the view, but most days the sunshine glittered on the snowy caps decorating tree limbs, or on the undulating, snow-covered forest floor. A red scarf swathed my face in order to filter some of the cold before the air flowed to my lungs. While the trek resulted in numb toes, the joy of Tasha’s fireplace waited for me.

If a constant fire hadn’t been burning in the Rumford fireplace, a man could have stepped inside it and looked up through the brick chimney. First thing in the morning, Tasha would stir the embers, add a few birch bark logs that quickly flamed, and then add oak or other hardwood that would burn for hours. When I emerged from the canopy bed, leaving behind a nest of the featherbed and quilts, I slipped into my coat, hauled in armloads of wood, and deposit them on the hearth. Throughout the day, either Tasha or I would poke at the fire, add another log, and revel in the heat. And like a final blessing, each night Tasha banked the fire so that it could sleep through the night and be revived at sunrise.

Once while watching sparks dance up the back of the fireplace, Tasha brought up the folklore connected with the sight. She and her brother had called the sparks British soldiers because they reminded them of the Redcoats. No such tradition lingered from my childhood, only the memories of flushed cheeks and wood smoke clinging to my hair.

When the discussion traveled on to how others loved her fire, Tasha confided, ““Often when I invite someone for tea, the fire mesmerizes them, their faces grow dreamy, and they are hesitant to depart. Usually, I can shoo them away by announcing it is time to milk the goats and attend to the evening chores.”

Thankfully, I was privileged to draw my chair closer to Tasha’s fire, to listen to her stories, learn from her wisdom, and bask in the warmth of her friendship.

Dedham Blue Rabbits

Dedham teapot

Blue and White

            While Tasha owned several pink luster tea sets and even gave one of them to me, she also loved her Canton china and a special blue and white tea set from the early nineteenth century. Sitting by her fire, I would cradle the deep saucers decorated with simple blue flowers that resembled dianthus, and sip from the thin, handless cups. In The Private Life of Tasha Tudor, Richard Brown featured a photo of Tasha pouring from the blue and white tea pot as she served a young visitor.

            When pausing to gaze around Corgi Cottage, the combination of blue and white appears in the checked curtains, cream and blue crocks, and pillows, and of course, rows of Canton china shine in the kitchen cupboard. Much of the cherished china once served as ballast in Tasha’s grandfather’s ship. The Ice King figured out how to transport ice from local New England ponds to various southern locations, and return with cargo bound for Boston.

            While Tasha loved her antique china, she also introduced me to another, more whimsical pottery. One afternoon, she tossed tea leaves into a cunning teapot with a crackled glaze and a band of blue rabbits racing around its chubby middle.

            “Where did you find such a sweet tea pot?” I asked her.

            We carried the tea tray to the fireplace, where Tasha told me about the Dedham pottery, founded by a Robertson family in 1876. After the Scottish potter, Hugh Robertson attended the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and observed Chinese pottery with a crackled red glaze, he decided to create a similar type of stoneware with cobalt blue designs. The first pottery was established in Chelsea, Massachusetts and about twenty years later, move to Dedham. While the crouching rabbit with its ears back most often decorated the pottery, sometimes other animals, flowers and leaves appeared.

            Tasha showed me a couple of other pieces of Dedham pottery and declared, “A woman can never have enough china. It is her prerogative.”

            About a week later, after returning home, I opened my rural mailbox to find a package marked “fragile”. A twin of Tasha’s Dedham teapot glimmered midst the packing material; its cobalt blue rabbits snuggled among leaves. Each time I fill it with tea leaves and steaming water, I remember another peaceful moment, learning more than history near Tasha’s fireplace.

Canton China

Washing lovely china

Hollyhocks in my Garden

Hollyhocks

Tasha loved hollyhocks. Near the middle of June, I can remember her calling me and asking if my hollyhocks were blooming, because in Vermont’s climate, her stately plants would not open for several more weeks. In the early part of the nineteenth century, hollyhocks were one of those cottage flowers that surrounded homes and even appeared near outbuildings. Their iridescent bell-shaped blossoms shimmer in red, pink, deep maroon, white and yellow. For some reason, Tasha had lost her yellow hollyhocks and had not found any volunteers from which she could pluck a few seed pods until she strolled through a living history village.

“But I just didn't feeling right about taking any seeds,” she confessed, as we sat near her hearth.

“Next summer, I’ll send you some from my plants.” While the canaries sang, I poured myself more tea and nibbled on a slice of flaky pastry that held a thick, sticky poppy seed filling.

We reflected about playing with hollyhock dolls, and how the dolls could hold the flowers as parasols or use them as small boats. Slowly, our conversation drifted away from gardening and onto homestead activities, our baby goats, cheese making and how to create pectin from green apples. While none of those subjects would appear in flashy headlines, they illustrated the daily tasks that shaped Tasha’s life. A remarkable life that still inspires many others to delight in those simple pleasures.

Tasha's June Garden

Feline Friend for Tasha

Napping in the weaving room

Perched on a soft coverlet

While most folks associate Welsh Pembroke Corgyn with Tasha, she also loved cats and they were attracted to her. Miaou, her one-eyed gray tabby often slept in large antique bowls, or snuggled on the bed in the winter kitchen. But of course, she was Tasha’s well-loved pet, but one day I saw a stray cat bond with Tasha.

Tasha and I were attending the Spencerian Saga, held each fall near Platt Rogers Spencer’s home in Ashtabula, Ohio. Along with the other students, we took a field trip to visit Spencer’s grave. A cloudless sky shimmered overhead and a few trees displayed their fall colors as Tasha and I strolled through the cemetery, looking at the flowers and sayings on the older tombstones. Because we were there to celebrate Spencer’s achievements and not to attend a funeral, the peace of the place settled over us.

Out of nowhere, a black cat with white markings sauntered up the brick path and paused by Tasha. He stared up at her with that certain look that asks for attention. She sat down on the grass, and cuddled him. Settling into her arms, he began to purr. When his desire for snuggles was satisfied, Tasha amused him with a blade of grass, wiggling it back and forth as the cat pounced on it. Finally, our band of students needed to leave, so Tasha gave kitty one last hug. He sat on the path, a quiet sentinel watching our car drive away.

Tasha and her new friend

Sewing by the hearth with a sleepy tabby

Winter Gardening Pleasures

Tasha's front porch

Like most gardeners, late winter was the time when Tasha perused seed and nursery catalogs. And because I usually visited during February, our conversations rambled off to our favorite heirloom roses, the heady fragrance of scented geraniums and our favorite colors of hollyhocks. Tasha also confessed her habit of now and then, taking a cutting or a seed pod while strolling through a famous garden. If I remember correctly, her boxwood plants were cuttings from a plant at Mount Vernon. She nurtured the same habit in me by giving me poppy seed pods so that I could splash their seeds around my garden. Every year, their lavender or pink flowers shimmer between the dianthus and clumps of thyme.

When I voiced my frustration over primrose seeds from seed companies that failed to germinate, Tasha explained that the freshest seeds came from the American Primrose Society. She encouraged me to join the group, and described the proper steps for germinating primula. Later that spring, I opened a birthday package sent from Tasha and there glowed a silver-green primula with delicate yellow flowers that I had admired in her greenhouse. Whenever I spy primroses as a nursery, I think of the many different varieties that bloomed in her garden and the small pots decorating her kitchen windowsill.

For Tasha, gardening was another art form with a three dimensional pallet of textures, colors and scents. With her imagination and penchant for design, she shaped flowerbeds that linger in her illustrations and inspire gardeners around the world.

In her greenhouse, Tasha and Carol Lueck