A Medieval Monk’s Herb Garden

 

From The Conversation:

For whatever the land you possess, whether it be where sand
And gravel lie barren and dead, or where fruits grow heavy
In rich moist ground; whether high on a steep hillside,
Easy ground in the plain or rough among sloping valleys -
Whereever it is, your land cannot fail to produce
Its native plants…

These words come the Hortulus: The Little Garden written by Wahlafrid Strabo (c. 808-849), who was a Benedictine monk from the monastery of Reichnau on an island in Lake Constance.

The 9th-century Hortulus is considered one of the most important European historical documents on gardening and plants, combining practical advice with its poetry. It continues to inspire modern gardeners in planting and design. The writings offer a tour of the monastery garden and the qualities of its plants. Twenty-nine plants are named, from Indian pepper to grapes, nettle, pennyroyal and peach. For the most part these are medicinal, though Wahlafrid includes some culinary observations, and a final detail about the rose as a source of soothing oil and symbol of the Virgin Mary.

The descriptions of the fresh and delightful taste of melon and gourds (bottle gourd or calabash) sit alongside longer discussion of the use and preparation of herbs and vegetables for health.

As a flavour of the way in which these observations were made, take the plant Southernwood (Aretemisia Abrotanum), not commonly known these days but common enough in the medieval period. Strabo notes that: “It has power against fevers, banishes stitch, and if your limbs ache with the elusive and mysterious pain of gout, it will bring relief.” (Read more.)

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Moral Inversion and Disengagement

 From Unlicensed Punditry:

I was watching a recent clip of Barack Obama this morning defending Democrats and their agenda and as I began to consider all the things he said and did during his terms and how it seems evident now that he was neck deep in the Russiagate hoax, and continued pulling the strings through a shadow government until it all crashed after President Doughbrains wrapped the entire Democrat clown car around a telephone pole during June of 2024, it reminded me of why I really, really dislike the guy.

Has nothing to do with race, or the fact he is a racialist and a stealth communist, it has to do with the one characteristic that I truly hate in people.

Let me give you an example before I define and describe that characteristic and what backs it up.

I was on the road a fair amount from 2014 to early 2020, so I never had time or the inclination to watch much regular TV but I remember watching a few episodes of a 2018 TV series called “You” on Netflix (I looked, it is still streaming there) when I was working up in Vancouver. “You” was a psychological thriller series based on the books by Caroline Kepnes (I know nothing about her other than this series was based on her books). (Read more.)

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The Whoredom Economy

 From Of Home and Womanhood:

If I am allowed to be totally honest and frank, it seems to me that men love whores and women love to be whores, to the point it is costing them their families, their children, jobs, and reputations. Men and women alike are willing to put it all on the line for sex.

All of us have a story we know about. Whether in the news, your favorite podcaster, a political figure, your neighbor next door, or even your friend. We all have heard it. When my husband’s father was caught cheating, his wife did not yell, she did not scream. She told him to sit and wait. In the next room she grabbed something, she set it down next to him, opened on the bed, inside were the hundreds of pictures of their family. Three little children all smiling back. Vacations, trips, and Christmas dinners, an entire story of a family out in the open. She told him — look, this is what you are losing, this is the price you are paying, this is your cost. He did not care. The book was closed, the price was paid, and now many years later the cost has not lifted, it is still being paid.

This is nothing new. People have cheated since the dawn of time. But the sexual marketplace has changed. It is now organized around desire rather than character. The currency used to be virtue; now it’s sexual desirability. The objective was marriage; now it’s pleasure. We have exchanged what we value for the things we desire.

What do I mean by this?

I mean we have separated sex from all the things that gave it greater purpose. Finding someone attractive was not the only thing that mattered. We were looking for someone to marry, someone to have children with, someone to spend the rest of our lives with. The idea of marrying someone nowadays without taking “test-drive” first is seen as the worst possible thing a person can do. In this new economy all the qualities you might have that make you a great spouse do not matter. The real question is— are you sexually desirable? Are you good in bed? You can possess none of the qualities necessary to be a good partner and still have no shortage of options. This is because the goal is no longer to build a life with someone; it is only to satisfy desires.

Men claim they hate whores, and yet they seek them. Women claim they hate to be objectified, and yet they seek it. Men claim to despise sluttiness, and yet they throw their marriages away for the sake of a slut. Women hate that all men think about is sex, and yet they give it. We have done all of it to ourselves. (Read more.)

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How to Style Your Home and Wardrobe with Toile de Jouy

 

From Léonce:

 Recently, I have developed a fascination with toile de Jouy, a design that you may recognize even if you are not familiar with its name or its historical ties to Oberkampf. For instance, think of the iconic pattern featured on Dior’s Book Tote. This toile de Jouy pattern was designed by Dior’s creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, to pay homage to the house’s heritage—Christian Dior’s first boutique on Avenue Montaigne prominently featured a pastoral toile pattern in its interior. Or recall the scene in the 1963 film Charade, where Audrey Hepburn’s character, left with only her Louis Vuitton luggage, retreats to a Parisian hotel room adorned with charming blue toile wallpaper. While the room isn’t ostentatiously luxurious, it exudes a captivating, understated elegance.

I remain deeply inspired by toile de Jouy for its ability to tap into one’s imagination. For me, observing a toile de Jouy within an interior feels like a journey through time. I am particularly enamored with the single-color designs by Jean-Baptiste Huet (1745-1811), which depict pastoral scenes and vignettes of French countryside life. These designs also feature exotic travel fantasies, allusions to European mythology, and nods to scientific advancements of the era, such as the first flight of the hot-air balloon (Montgolfière) in Versaille in 1783. Each piece is a captivating visual narrative, rich with historical and cultural references. (Read more.)

To toile or not to toile? From A Wanderlust Home:

The word “toile” comes from the French word for linen cloth.  The word is shortened from the full name toile de Jouy. Toile de Jouy was originally produced in Ireland in the mid 1700s, but jumped from the island to England and to France where it was dubbed "Toile de Jouy," which literally means "cloth from Jouy-en-Josas," a town in northern France. Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf moved to Jouy-en-Josas and started a factory there in 1759, which produced the now eponymous "toile de Jouy."

Although the word toile means fabric, the word toile has evolved to also refer to the original design aesthetic of the fabric. Toile designs are popular for non-fabric items like fine china and wallpaper.

The design aesthetic when using Toile is usually very traditional. Times have definitely changed and we are seeing more Toile used in contemporary designs.  And, we are loving it and here for it all! (Read more.)

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We Lost a Battle, Not the War

 From Direct Line News:

The 2026 election is behind us. The road to 2028 and 2030 begins today, and Republicans cannot afford to waste another minute.

Well, last night certainly didn’t go the way we wanted.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, make excuses, or try putting lipstick on a pig. Republicans took some punches. We lost races we wanted to win. Some of those losses hurt.

But my friends, we lost a battle, not the war.

I’ve been involved in Republican politics for more than four decades. I’ve seen great victories, embarrassing defeats, and just about everything in between. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that political fortunes change.

Today, we dust ourselves off and get back to work.

Our Principles Didn’t Lose Their Value Overnight

I remain convinced that Republican principles of limited government, lower taxes, free enterprise, and individual responsibility offer the better economic approach.

Government cannot tax, spend, and regulate its way to prosperity. You don’t generate lasting economic growth by making businesses jump through more hoops or taking another bite out of family paychecks.

Look at Maryland.

Governor Wes Moore and the Democrats in Annapolis still haven’t solved our structural budget problems. Maryland’s own fiscal analysts project a $2.57 billion structural deficit in fiscal 2028, growing to $3.44 billion by 2030.¹

And what should taxpayers expect next?

More tax hikes? More fee hikes? Some imaginary new thing to tax that nobody has thought of yet?

Sometimes I wonder whether Annapolis has a committee whose sole responsibility is discovering something Marylanders haven’t been taxed on.

I’m joking, of course. Unfortunately, the budget problems aren’t funny.

Washington’s Next Two Years Could Be a Circus

Democrats have regained control of Congress, and I’m concerned about where their priorities will lead.

We’ve already heard talk of investigations, subpoenas, and possible impeachment proceedings.² Congressional oversight has its place, but Americans didn’t send representatives to Washington to stage another two-year political food fight.

People want affordable groceries, reasonable energy bills, attainable housing, and opportunities to get ahead.

Democratic leaders say affordability is on their agenda. Good. Let’s see whether they deliver results or spend their time pursuing political investigations and expanding government programs.

I also reject the notion that Americans must embrace socialism to solve economic problems. Markets aren’t perfect, but government control isn’t some magical cure.

And while we’re discussing principles, antisemitism has absolutely no place in American politics. Not on the left. Not on the right. Nowhere.

The Road to 2028 Starts This Morning

Here’s where Republicans need to stop complaining and start organizing.

If you’re thinking about running for office in 2028 or 2030, start today.

Not next summer. Not six months before filing deadlines. Today.

We need to recruit candidates for County Executive, County Council, the General Assembly, Congress, and local offices. We need candidate training, fundraising networks, better communications, year-round community involvement, and serious proposals addressing affordability.

And we need to compete in places we’ve practically surrendered without a fight. (Read more.)

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Paris Was Burning

 From Charles Coulombe at Crisis:

The past few months have been exciting ones in France, and indeed throughout Europe. This current chapter may be said to have begun at the end of July, when 50,000 to over 70,000 mostly Moroccan migrants crossed the border into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta via swimming or the border facilities. This was set off by a previous ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court in June 2026, which ruled that migrants who had entered the country illegally could not be immediately sent back; this was of course exploited by criminal networks.

The scenes on the internet and television of hordes of foreigners overwhelming the Spanish town formed a perfect backdrop to the launch of the Save Europe Act (advocating Remigration) on August 1. The brainchild of Dutch activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek and Austrian activist Martin Sellner (both of whom are usually labeled as “far-Right” in the leftist European press), it had originally been proposed to the European Commission and quickly knocked down by that body. In response to Ceuta, youthful activists descended upon Ceuta to publicize the beleaguered enclave’s plight, and took to the streets to call for an end to immigrant-fueled crime, and for remigration. Demonstrations occurred in support all over Europe.

This initial excitement cast into stark relief the situation this writer described earlier in these pages. Most countries in Europe are governed by an establishment made up of Socialist and other leftist parties ruling in coalition with Conservative or Christian Democratic parties. The former know what they want, and so are constantly pushing these coalitions’ policies leftward; the latter have given up whatever doctrines they had, and are simply employment agencies—they happily move leftward if that is the price of a certified seat at the public feeding trough. They have presided over the flood of heavily Islamic immigration which has in turn sparked a tidal wave of crime and unrest. For the past decade or more they have been far more truculent with those that notice this than with actual criminals. Hence have emerged “Two Tier Policing” (light sentences for immigrants and others who murder, rape, and steal; throwing the book at those who complain about this) and “Lawfare” (harassing those who complain about it, seizing their bank accounts, denying them entrance to a given country, and the like). It did not escape ordinary Europeans’ notice that the abusers of life and limb did not receive anything like the police attention they themselves did for simply speaking or thinking in a way those in power dislike. Add to all of this the ongoing war in Ukraine. (Read more.)

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Secret Numbers and Royal Betrayal

 

From Tony Riches:

How a queen’s secret correspondence helped sustain the Royalist cause as England descended into civil war.

One of the challenges in writing about the English Civil War is the number of ‘rabbit holes’ to distract me. One example is exploring the wealth of secret correspondence between the king and queen. 

In the summer of 1642, England faced catastrophe. King Charles I and Parliament reached an impasse, armies gathered, and Queen Henrietta Maria was in The Hague, working to raise money and secure the weapons her husband desperately needed. The problem was a letter could be intercepted, its contents exposed, and the information used against the Crown.

Henrietta Maria and Charles relied on secret codes or ‘ciphers’. Their letters were more than messages between husband and wife. They were full of information about money, military supplies, diplomatic negotiations and people whose loyalties might determine the outcome of the coming war.

As part of my research into this I bought a copy of the original letters from Queen Henrietta Maria to Charles I, including correspondence written in ciphers. These letters provide a fascinating glimpse into a secret world, hidden behind an apparently meaningless string of numbers. (Read more.)

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The Numbers Don't Lie

 From Tierney's Real News:

25 million Republicans stayed home because Trump wasn’t on the ballot and Democrats outvoted us by 11 million votes and those votes were targeted to races that Democrats needed to win to secure a wide margin in the House and Senate!

In plain English, about 11 million more Democrats showed up relative to their presidential baseline than Republicans did relative to theirs. In several states the Democratic candidate actually got *more* votes than Harris received in 2024. That did not happen on the Republican side at all.

If the standard “people just don’t vote in midterms” excuse were true, both parties should have seen roughly the same kind of drop. They didn’t. Republicans collapsed without Trump on the ballot. Democrats did not.

That is exactly what Trump has been saying. He was the one who brought those voters out. When he wasn’t there, a huge chunk of the coalition stayed home. The professional Republican get-out-the-vote operation, the consultants, the state parties, the “ground game” everyone was supposed to be running — it did not replace him. The numbers show it. (Read more.)

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Who Killed the Fairies?

 From Simon's British Mythology:

In the last five hundred years there have been periods of enthusiasm for fairies among writers and, more usually, generations of indifference and disdain (the ‘deserts’ of the title). Looking back at the years since the Reformation, a juicy half millennium of British history, I can identify three periods when fairies were important in national British culture. The first might be called ‘Elizabethan plus’ and stretches from about 1570 to the English Civil War: in this period playwrights and poets could not shut up about fairies. Indeed, no twee rhyme was complete/ without a fairy feat (see what I did there?) The second stretches through most of the nineteenth century. British folklore collectors tried their best, at this time, to scribble down everything they could about the ‘hill folk’ and their deeds. This peaked perhaps in the 1880s or 1890s. By the Great War it was most certainly over. Then the third period of enthusiasm started about thirty years ago… I am writing in the middle of it. It too, of course, will end.

Fairylore did not alter very much in the first four hundred years. Compare Elizabethan fairylore (and we have two extraordinary books) with nineteenth-century fairylore (where we don’t have any great books).1 If you do so you will see that fairylore remained essentially the same out in the British countryside. Fairies had not vanished there. They were part of the old order: the grim grind of surviving in a landscape which dated back to the Neolithic. The fairy enthusiasms and the periods of disdain (which turned on and off like a faulty bulb) were the inconsequential fashion choices of a relatively small literate class. The Elizabethan and Caroline scribblers particularly seem to have had no influence on rural fairylore. As a historian I find this counter-intuitive. I expect things to mutate: I probably also have the prejudice deep inside me that intellectual elite matter outside intellectual elites. But what has impressed me in a decade and a half in supernatural studies is that rural folklore is extraordinarily conservative and extraordinarily resilient. The reason that these periods of fashion matter is that when the light bulb comes on we see the fairies in our sources. (Read more.)

 

The Isles of the Blessed. From The Library of Lewis and Tolkien:

One of the most stirring elements of Tolkien’s mythology glimpsed in The Lord of the Rings is the recurring allusions to a distant and enchanted island — an island of the elves — that lies far out in the Western seas. The tantalizing knowledge of this mysterious realm frames the narrative itself: we hear of this remote region early on, in the second chapter of the book, when the narrator mentions (almost in passing) that “past the old towers beyond the western borders of the Shire” lie “the Grey Havens, from which at times elven-ships set sail, never to return.” And at (nearly) the end of the book, Frodo, wounded, bereaved, and restless, journeys there to be healed, and with Frodo we glimpse it at last, the “white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

In between, allusions to the lands across the western sea recur all throughout the book. The elves hold it in memory, they sing of it, here and there they speak of going back one day; and the shadow of what the elves’ return to this land — their eventual departure from Middle-earth — forebodes hangs over the whole narrative: we know that something irreplaceably good and beautiful will have gone out of the world.

Meanwhile, the world of The Chronicles of Narnia also features a mysterious and enchanted land that lies far, far out beyond the sea, that lies indeed at the world’s very end: “Aslan’s country,” the homeland of the Great Lion himself. Our first indication that Aslan comes to Narnia — like Tolkien’s Elves to Middle-earth — from beyond the sea comes from one of Aslan’s epithets when we first meet him in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: he is “the son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea.”

And as with the end of The Lord of the Rings, in the final chapter of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we catch a glimpse of Aslan’s country: a vast mountain range lying beyond the world, “warm and green and full of forests and waterfalls however high you looked.” (But in Lewis’ world the enchanted land beyond the waves lies not in the West, but in the East, the direction of the sunrise.)

It is striking that both Narnia and Middle-earth contain stories of remote and enchanted lands situated across the sea, lands of great beauty and goodness that lie across the waves and beyond the mortal world. This image — and the ache of longing evoked by it — was clearly one that both authors felt deeply. (A shared sensibility that they no doubt discussed with one another as well.) Where does the image of such a land come from, and why did both men respond so powerfully to it? (Read more.)

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