•^ The Afternoon of the Tear g 



when one is very young. I think this must be because, 

 although sweet, yet they are so pungent and vigorous and 

 surprisingly unexpected from such delicately cut leaves. 

 The writer of the article in question described how, 

 when a child, she used to go with her father on winter 

 Sunday afternoons to see a friend who was renowned for 

 his collection of sweet-leaved geraniums. She used to 

 follow ' the two flower-lovers, the one so tall and straight, 

 the other old and bent, up and down the narrow aisles 

 between the benches of plants, pausing when they paused, 

 moving slowly forward when they advanced, filled with 

 beatitude by the warm, sweet odours given off by the 

 moist earth and the growing green things. No notice was 

 taken of me, and so, left to my own devices, I would snip 

 as I went, a leaf here, a leaf there, until finally with my 

 hands and pockets full of aromatic leaves I would subside 

 on an upturned tub in a corner and sniff and compare the 

 different scents to my heart's content. It was a very 

 good game indeed, as well as valuable nose training. It 

 always seemed amazing that just leaves could have such 

 a variety of odours. Some had the scents of oranges or 

 lemons, some were spicy, others had a rose-like fragrance, 

 and many were vaguely familiar but tantalizingly illusive. 

 One that especially ravished my youthful nose smelled 

 exactly like the pennyroyal that grew in our woods. The 

 leaves of this kind were large and soft, and the bush was 

 lax and ungainly in habit. I know it now for Pelargonium 

 tomentosum, usually called the peppermint geranium. 1 



1 In her delightful Kitchen Essays, Lady Jekyll gives a recipe for 

 peppermint jelly flavoured with these leaves. With her kind permission 

 I quote this recipe : — ' Make a quart of good lemon jelly in the 

 approved way, preferably with calves' feet, more probably with best 



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