Through the Garden Gate

Miss Lawrence says, "Dill is a hardy annual. The seeds can be sown in fall or early spring. The seedlings must be thinned, and Mrs. Clarkson says she saves every scrap that is pulled up. She uses them in potato salad, and sprinkles them over broiled lamb."Miss Lawrence has distilled much of her gardening and some of her cooking knowledge into this lovely little book (about 250 pages). Ideas abound from sources such as old wives tales, myths, stories, poetry, and the miscellaneous information passed along to Miss Lawrence from her correspondents, friends, and readers. Reading this text is like sitting at a wise woman's knee and listening to her tell about past times. Will it rain on Saint Swithin's Day (July 15th) as it did in 971 A.D when his body was transferred from a forgotten grave to the Cathedral for a proper burial? Were the Chinese, who considered the frog the lord of waters onto something, "Send soon O frog the jewel of water."But my favorite writing is the poetry she intersperses into the text -- "A bank where the wild thyme blows, Where Oxlips and the nodding Violet grows, Quite over canopied with lucious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses and with eglantine." Planted any eglantine lately..?