Saint John's Wort

Went to the front field this morning, to pick Saint John's Wort.

Herbalists believe that if a plant grows abundantly in your proximity, it's because you are in need of its properties.  If this is true the Wort, which is supposed to have anti-depressant and calming powers, is accurately reading my mind.

This is my least favorite season, and the fact that each year the heat and humidity grow worse ratchets my awareness of climate change up to obsessive levels.  Holed up in the house with the windows closed and the shades down to keep out the heat, I creep wanly in the gloom like some cave creature, pondering disaster scenarios.

Hence the Wort.

Sent to me by the midsummer deities, and perhaps by the Baptist as well, its Van Gogh yellow starts to work on me right away.  I snip off the tops of branches, trying to calculate how much I'll need to make enough tincture to last me through the year.  The plants are so abundant this summer that I could cheer up entire nations of depressives.

Later today I will buy a bottle of cheap vodka.  Then I will strip the Wort stems, chop up the flowers and leaves, put them in a jar and pour in enough vodka to cover them.  I will give the jar a good shake and watch the vodka turn blood red.  This ability to "bleed," plus its habit of blooming around the feast of Saint John, in midsummer, is what gave the Wort its name.

If you're wondering what blood has to do with John the Baptist, here's a Biblical episode worthy of cable TV:  John had condemned Herod Antipas, who was divorced, for marrying Herodias, who was also divorced and had a daughter, Salome, by her former husband.

Herodias felt threatened by the Baptist, and plotted to get rid of him.  For Herod's birthday she had Salome dance for him, dressed in the famous seven veils.  Herod was so overcome that he offered to give Salome anything she wanted.  Her mother told her to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

Here she is, painted by Lukas Cranach, having changed out of the seven veils into street clothes. The dark red of her headdress and of the Baptist's severed neck is exactly the shade of red that the Wort exudes when you crush it.

A Fish Named Salome

I've been avoiding writing about this for a couple of weeks because the subject will require descriptive powers that may well be beyond me.  But I cannot keep it to myself any longer:  I have a fish, and his name is Salome!

Right away, your lightning-quick eye catches a glitch, an inconsistency, an error.  Wasn't Salome the dancer who, with her seven veils, enticed Herod to decapitate John the Baptist?  Obviously she was a woman, and clearly I shouldn't have named my male fish after her.

But the operant factor here is not gender, but the seven veils.  Or maybe five.  In the case of my Salome--a double-tailed, half-moon male Betta--it's hard to get an exact count of veils, or fins, or tails.  What is certain is that his tiny, iridescent blue-green body trails a pleated corolla of barely-there yellow veined with random threads of brilliant blue and palest pink.

Like a bride hampered by a too-long train, Salome drags his veils behind while he swims inside the two-gallon vase that is his home.  But when he slows down the veils flare up and he turns into a kind of flower.  Sometimes, when he makes a quick turn, he runs into his outspread fins and tail, like a flamenco dancer turning into her trailing skirt.

How big is he?  When he is in full display, he's about the size of a small potato chip.  His eyes are the size of fly droppings.  His mouth, though tiny, never fails to remind me of Angelina Jolie.

His scientific name is Betta splendens, and he is totally splendid and resplendent, as are the males of most animal species, except our own.  But because in most species, including our own, the males are generally more aggressive, poor Salome cannot have a companion.

If the companion were male, they would batter each other to death.  If female, they would mate and tend their nest and, as soon as the babies hatched, would eat every last one.  So Salome lives in solitude.

But my online research tells me that Bettas are sociable little fish, who can be trained to follow one's finger and even jump through hoops, and who like variety in their environment.  For exercise, one website recommends placing a mirror next to the bowl, but keeping it there for no longer than four minutes, lest the poor thing exhaust himself trying to kill his reflection.

I haven't tried the hoop or the mirror yet, but I keep Salome in the kitchen, where I tell him how gorgeous he is a dozen times a day as I trundle past with basketfuls of stuff from the (soon-to-be-dead, I hope) garden.  And where the outside of his bowl periodically gets decorated with nose prints from Bisou.