When
I was a senior in college, I had an internship with Strawberry Banke, the
historic village in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. My task was to research the
introduction dates for the various medicinal herbs that were planted in the
doctor’s garden, to make sure the plantings were accurate. (They were not.) I
was also researching how each plant was used in around 1790. I spent hours
digging through old newspapers for ports up and down the coast, reading herbals
that were common at the time, and charting it all on a huge piece of cardstock.
I was fascinated.
There
were gaps in my knowledge, so, during Spring Break, I went to Boston for three
days. I wandered between the Public Library, with its huge and old reading
room, where you waited for your books to be brought out and the Massachusetts
Horticultural Library, a nineteenth century double decker in South Boston, full
of old gardening books. The streets between the two were lined with brick rowhouses
close to the street. Each house had a ten by twelve garden in front, surrounded
by an iron fence. The tiny spaces were all planted for Spring. One would hold a
blooming cherry, the next a row of bright yellow daffodils tossing in the
breeze. Others had early red tulips or late purple crocus. Spots of color
between dark walls and fences. Blue sky high above. Cold wind. I carried my
backpack full of notecards, lunch, and some Earl Grey tea, doing research.
There was nothing else I wanted to be doing.
It
has been a very long time since I conducted original research on the plants,
houses, and lives of New Englanders in either the 18th or early 20th
century. It was a good life, but I have
moved on. I still have the chart. I still know how all of those plants were
used in early New England. And I still watch for the spring blooms, the bright
daffodils, that dance by the side of the road as I walk to and from work on
these March days.
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