Rose scented geraniums, lemon verbena, Jeremy Lee and a spacehopper
Abundance: 30 November 2023
The frost has ridden a spacehopper1 across the garden. What once was perky, now punctuated by soft implosions, browning leaves and crushed stems.
The scented geranium leaves that most enthusiastically reached for the sun suffered most: the youngest, once protected beneath, now exposed.
Overnight, the lemon verbena has gone from showing the first sign of eyeliner on its lime green leaves to curling like fried prawns. Winter is making its own compost.
Another hard frost will do for the leaves that remain, so I pick while I can.
Two minutes picking and three snips of the secateurs between heavy downpours and I’ve enough scented geranium and lemon verbena to last until the plants resprout in late spring. I’ve left the lemon verbena on the side to dry for the few days they need. Crisp, they retain 90% of their fresh liveliness. That’ll do me.
The young, still vibrant, scented geranium leaves need to be dealt with immediately, before they fall quickly into saggy lobes. Half go to herb sugar, half to syrup. This puts them in a kind of culinary holding pattern, their flavour captured to use another time.