I LOVE wreath-making time. You might say I really get "IN" to it! Huge as this wreath appears as I sit in it, it was dwarfed once it is hung on the enormous barn at Glynwood Farm where I was the head gardener. All the wreaths that I made there were fashioned entirely from materials grown and gathered on the land itself, so the first order of business was to go gather rose hips from the Rosa multiflora, considered a rampant intruder on pasturelands, but a rich source of bird food and decorative "berries". Since this happens during hunting season, equally rose-hip-colored clothing is the garb of the day.
Out of thirty-some odd holiday wreaths that I made that year, one of them began to evolve as particularly unChristmas. I kept adding things to it, figuring the faeries had me by the glue gun again and I'd figure it out sooner or later. When I found myself putting dark purple/grey dried Verbena hastata into it, I knew who it was for - one of our Board members who had been an enthusiastic supporter of wildflower planting and who had been my favorite seed-gathering buddy. It made perfect sense that his wreath would celebrate the holidays with chives, white yarrow, lavender, garlic chives, salvia clarissa, erograstis and the wild vervain.
I hadn't made a St. Barbara's Day wreath in a long time. I used to make them every year, following Adelma Grenier Simmons' suggestions that they be made from wheat and roses. I even had the honored opportunity to compare St. Barbara's Day wreath stories with Mrs. Simmons one year at the NY flower show.
The first time I met Adelma Simmons was nearly 20 years ago. Her Herb Gardening in Five Seasons was the first herb book I "devoured" and I certainly wanted to be her when I grew up. I remember so clearly finally going up to Caprilands, the 50-acre herb farm she owned in Coventry, CT, with a friend of mine on Mother's Day of 1978. As we parked the car and I was already becoming
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