September's Special Days: A Potpourri of Celebrations
Herb of the Year for 2024. Yarrow (Achillea millefolium). Selected by the International Herb Association
Flower of the Month for September: Aster
September is Better Breakfast Month
Week 1
September 2. Labor Day, also World Coconut Day
September 7. National Acorn Squash Day. Squash is the short form of the Narragansett askutasquash. With corn and beans, a Native American food staple.
September 8. Our planet isn’t always kind. Today in 1900, the Galveston Hurricane, the deadliest (some 8,000+ fatalities) in American history.
Week 2
September 9. Today in 1850: California became a state. The state flower: the California poppy, long used as a sedative.
September 14. In England, the traditional time for the hops harvest. The first hop garden seems to have been planted near Canterbury, in 1520, when brewers began to prefer hops to the herbal gruit—dandelion, burdock root, marigold, horehound, ground ivy, and heather—they previously used to flavor beer.
Week 3
September 16. National Guacamole Day: “Guacamole” derived from two Aztec words—ahuacatl (avocado), molli (sauce). . Here’s all you need to know about this interesting fruit.
September 17. Constitution Day, celebrating the signing of the U.S. Constitution by thirty-nine brave men on September 17, 1787. “A republic, if you can keep it.”
September 20. National Punch Day (No, not that kind. Be gentle.)
Week 4
September 23. The Fall Equinox and the first day of the Libra Season.
September 26. Johnny Appleseed's birthday.
September 28. St. Michaelmas Eve. Traditional: a blackberry dessert
September 29. International Coffee Day. And yes, coffee is an herb. But you knew that, didn’t you?
Celebrating Garlic Chives
There’s garlic (Allium sativum), and there are chives (A. schoenoprasum)—and then there are garlic chives (A. tuberosum, also called Chinese chives). They are brightening my late-summer gardens with pretty globes of starry white flowers, dearly loved by the bees. I’ve been snipping the flat green leaves into salads, omelets, soups, and mashed potatoes, where they add color and a subtle garlic taste.
For cooking, you’ll want the tender young leaves, so it’s a good idea to shear the entire clump back to the ground every three or four weeks. My chickens love the sheared leaves, chopped beak-size. No chickens? No worry: you can dry the snipped leaves or pop them into small plastic bags and freeze them for later meals.
Now, about those tiny black seeds that will inevitably be produced by those starry white flowers. You can collect them by tapping the drying seed head onto a plate and sprout the seeds for spicy salad sprouts. Or you can clip the seed heads while they’re still flowering, dry them in paper bags, shake out the seeds, and add the pretty heads to your herbal wreaths. Or you can let Nature take its course, in which case you will have more garlic chives than you know what to do with. (Of course, they do make lovely pass-along plants.) In cold regions, they’ll die back to the ground and pop up again in the spring. Every two or three years, dig and divide the clump.
There’s more, naturally. Herbalists have traditionally used garlic chives in the same way that they've used onions and other members of the Allium family: to stimulate the appetite, improve digestion, fight fatigue, and even grow hair on bald heads—more reasons to plant and enjoy this ornamental culinary and medicinal herb.
The juice of Onions mix’t with the decoction of Penniroyal . . .
anointed upon a bald head in the sun,
bringeth the haire againe very speedily.
—John Gerard, The Herball or General Historie of Plantes, 1597
September’s To-Do List
Learn the history of the well-traveled coconut and score a few unusual recipes. (The sobia recipe looks interesting.) Then dig into the origin story of the home-grown acorn squash. Plants may be firmly rooted in the earth, but they do get around.
Read about the Galveston Hurricane in China Bayles' 21st mystery, Widow's Tears. Keep an eye on the tropics this month. The 2024 hurricane season began with Beryl in June and continues through the end of November.
Bake this delicious rosemary-flavored apple cake in honor of Johnny Appleseed. (Your cast iron skillet is perfect for this.) For the story behind the story of the American apple, read Chapter 1 (“Desire: Sweetness”), in Michael Pollan’s brilliant book, The Botany of Desire. My favorite of Pollan’s many quotable quotes: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Consider planting a hops vine next spring. Looking for a vigorous herbal vine to cover that unsightly fence? Consider hops. Antibiotic and anti-inflammatory, the dried flowers used in salves and wound compresses. Hop flowers have a mild sedative action, can be brewed in sleepy-time teas, and used to treat digestive upsets. The green tips of the vine can be cooked and eaten as asparagus. And the dried flowers are the source of beer's flavor, bitterness, and aroma. What more can we ask of a vine?
To celebrate Constitution Day, bake Martha Washington’s famous Great Cake. Here’s the sweet story (40 eggs in 4 pounds of butter!). And here’s the recipe for the modern adaptation.
Make a pitcher of punch. The word derives from panch,the Hindustani word for five, for this traditional 5-ingredient drink: alcohol, lemon (or other fruit), sugar, water, and spiced tea. For a galaxy of stellar party punches, check out this collection of 30 drinkable recipes.
Learn how blackberries became the traditional Michaelmas treat and what the devil had to do with it.
“On Michaelmas Day the devil puts his foot on blackberries.”
Everyone, thanks for reading! I’d appreciate it if you’d ask your favorite librarian to put you on the waiting list for the latest China Bayles mystery, Forget Me Never. Available in print, digital, audio.
Supporting subscribers, I’ll be back next Monday with the September issue of LifeScapes, a post celebrating our sweet and wonderful heeler, Molly, who at 18 (at least!) is even older than I am.
Just wanted to report that I made the apple rosemary cake today and it is delicious! Thank you very much for including the link. What a perfect cake for a rainy day here in Seattle. ☔️
Also a Happy Fall to you Susan Bill and all the lovely folk on this page I am caning at the moment , I think all the steam created is going to shrink me ha! despite the odd weather this year we managed to pull together enough to put down