tussie mussie

From Irene Deitsch”s Tussie-Mussies: A Collector’s Guide to Victorian Posy Holders: “A ‘tussie’ is a nosegay, which is a Middle English word for a small group of flowers held together in a little bouquet. ‘Mussie’ refers to the moss that was moistened and put around the stems of the flowers to keep them from wilting. That’s why they’re called tussie-mussies.”

1.

A bench by the front door, holding scented geraniums, fuchsia, a rose that is supposed to cling to the netting against the wall but has ideas of its own, a bowl of ferns, an orchid, and some verbena. Above, unseen here, is a hanging basket of geraniums, lobelia, some ivy-ish creeper, and small petunias. This area is beloved by tree frogs who often leap in surprise when I water the pots.

2.

Another corner is bracketed by tomatoes, the ones to the left taller than me (I’m 5’6″), with many green fruits hanging in the shade of the leaves. This area gets hot in summer! And there are tree frogs here too, often on the surface of the soil. The tomato plants on the right are potato-leaved, a new variety to me this year — not the leave type but the fruit: Pink Berkeley Tie-die. There are 20 plants up here, 5 in the greenhouse, 8 in boxes we call the “cucumber boxes” but which are little protected boxes with glass windows facing south for the cooler months and netting now instead, to keep deer from grazing on the plants. There are also 10 more tomato plants in the vegetable garden. They’re slow this year but when they begin to ripen, we’ll have bowls to pick each morning, and in late summer, I’ll make roasted tomato sauce to freeze in jars, slow-roasted halves to freeze in containers to have on pizza in winter, and other preparations to take their goodness into the cold months.

3.

Summer’s tussie mussie would be dull without basil, particularly the lettuce leaf one I’ve grown to love most. This tub was planted with seeds I bought at the heavenly Bolhão market in Porto. It’s one of the most civilized markets I’ve ever known, the vendors kind and helpful — two women who were squeezing fresh oranges into single glasses agreed to fill a two litre jug for us in 2024 so my grandsons could have it with their breakfast at our beautiful suite nearby — and what I thought was so admirable was the wine merchant who poured your choice into proper glasses so you could sip from it as you wandered from stall to stall, stopping to buy sheep’s cheese with fresh rosemary, candied fruit, dark chocolate, pastéis de nata to have with that orange juice, and seeds of every kind.

4.

This morning as we drank our coffee on the upper deck after our swim, I counted 5 different species of bumble bees, though the one only I know for sure is the yellow-faced, the one you can see in the middle of the photograph, deep in the oregano, their own tussie mussie patch. For a month now the oregano has been loud with bees, so many that the flower-heads are often more bee than blossom. Aphrodite created this particular herb for joy, happiness, and protection; its Greek name ὀρίγανον means “joy of the mountains” and if you’ve ever hiked in Greek mountains, you’ll remember it, also filled with bees. 50 years ago when I was young in the Greek mountains, I remember sitting on a rock surrounded by flowering rosemary, oregano, thyme, and dittany of Crete, also an oregano, but with a more potent scent. Did I feel joy? I felt everything there.