A Lecture on Herbs

The local tea/chocolate shop held a lecture on herbs last week, which I went to with my friend Ann. The lecturer was a very appealing young herbalist, about mid thirties, who was her own advertisement for the various concoctions and decoctions she put together and sold.  With her wide smile, pink cheeks, and flawless skin, she was extremely pretty and healthy looking.  Her hair was a surprising silver, which she wore long and straight, with thick bangs framing her brow.  When we arrived, she was setting up a table with attractive little dark bottles and jars full of leaves and talking to one of the other attendees.   About 30 fold-up chairs had been set up and Ann and I claimed two of them.

We were still a few minutes early and the shop was still selling coffee and tea, so Ann and I went up to get some.  A wan young man, who appeared to have been pulled (gently) from a German romantic poem, was overseeing the beverages.  He produced my coffee immediately and told me to pay at the main counter, where a line was building up. A tall attractive thin woman with fuzzy blonde hair, about early sixties, was at the counter.  The customer ahead of me was paying her lecture fee and held out a credit card. 

"Oh," the clerk said, staring at it, slightly flustered. "Do you have cash?"

"No. You don't take credit cards?" 

"Well we do, but we don't like to."

"I'm sorry.  I don't have any cash." The customer was polite and apologetic. (Everyone at events involving herbs are polite and apologetic.  I think it's a law).

The clerk gingerly held the card between her thumb and index finger and, as if she was taking it to a forensics team, wandered toward the end of the counter, put it down, and picked up a small booklet.  After scanning text that was too complex to allow independent action, she approached the other clerk. During a long discussion, apparently on the level of advanced calculus, both clerks would occasionally glance with suspicion at the customer, still waiting politely and apologetically. After listening closely, indicated by a series of perplexed frowns, our clerk rummaged through some drawers until she pulled out an antique mechanical device that only my octogenarian dentist still uses.  After several attempts at scraping it across the card, she was able to emboss the payment on the credit form. Not quite done, however, she then very slowly, with an elegant Jane Austen hand, wrote out a receipt on a carbon-layered tablet, stapled one layer together with the credit card record, and handed both  over to the customer with a quiet shrug of triumph.  The customer took it with effuse apologies for the bother and then politely asked if she could have her card back.  I paid for my coffee with cash. 

Nearly ten minutes had gone by.  I sat down and waited for Ann to get her iced coffee.  I saw that she was leaning against the counter, the young Werther talking earnestly to a couple who had been behind to her. No sign of coffee or ice.

The managers seemed in no hurry to get started.  The shop was still open for other customers, who were milling about studying tea pots, tea equipment, exquisite dark chocolate truffles, and old fashioned bins with gold stamped lettering for exotic teas. Only drug lords would have enough cash to buy anything in that store, except for my coffee and perhaps the pastel bulky cakes and pastries, slathered with creamy icing and fillings calling to us from their glass cases.  They had tempted me in the past. However, every one I bought was flavored to a nearly toxic level with almond paste, so I was now immune to their sugary charms.

Ann finally came back both amused mildly exasperated. While her tea was apparently undergoing cold fusion, she listened to the conversation between Casper the Friendly Ghost and the couple behind her.  The man announced that they were "off caffeine" and then provided his recipe for chai in great detail, which involved warm milk, several spices and many steps.  After an enthusiastic exchange involving nuances to the chai mix, the clerk wandered off and came back with Ann's tea.  Then, of course, she had to pay for it at the other counter, where a long line of hopeful credit card holders still waited. 

At the start, the herbalist asked each of us what herbs or spices interested us. Most of the small audience, including Ann, wanted information on spices, especially turmeric, ginger, ginseng. The partner of the chai guy, a tall, square firm woman with dark intense eyes, was a tarot card reader and was interested in herbs for her "dream work."   I told the lecturer that I wanted to find more about what grew on our property, especially elderberry and St. Johns Wort.  

She began her talk by distributing spoons, which we used over the course of her talk to sample some of her syrups, which she said were now being sold at the teashop.  The two co-owners, one of whom I realized was my clerk, were learning against the counter behind the lecturer, and waved to us.  The non-clerk pointed to the back of the shop and said. "We'll stay open after her lecture in case anyone wants to purchase some of her products, which you'll just love."

The tinctures and syrups were preserved in grain alcohol, and, by my seventh or eighth spoonful, its combinations of shoots, roots, and leaves were creating an odd buzzy sensation.  Not unpleasant but a little scary.  She encouraged questions, and I became uninhibited enough to ask what she thought about wheat grass.  After telling the group how I used to take shots with a chaser of carrot and ginger juice on my way to work, but that it was so horrible I gave up,  asked the speaker if it actually had any benefits.  She responded that didn't know much about wheat grass, but a woman in front of me boasted. 'I still take it.  If you combine it with orange juice it's really very good."  
"Yuck,' I said.  
She wheeled around, glared at me, and said with the passion of a zealot. "You should just try it."  
This was about as outwardly angry as this mob got, but one shouldn't underestimate the underlying righteous fury of women attending a lecture on herbs in a teashop.

The lecture was interesting, informative, and, convinced me that all I needed was nettle and elderberry to live indefinitely.  At the end of the talk, our speaker mentioned again that the store was now selling her products, and my friend Ann was interested in the two she had been most heavily promoting. These presumably produced enough energy and immunity to live through a nuclear attack.  Michael and I were due at a friend's for  dinner, so I left her there  

Ann told me later that it took her 45 minutes before she managed to buy the syrups.  After waiting in line with other eager buyers, she learned that the storeowners had not actually stocked these two potions yet, even though they were the herbalist's most popular products.  They had managed to put some of the less appealing herbs on their shelves.  Ann sought out the lecturer herself, who was still hanging around talking to acolytes, and asked if she happened to have any bottles with her that she could sell.  She did, but in her trunk, and went outside to get them.  After she returned, Ann asked if she could pay the herbalist directly, but was told no.  She needed to go back to the counter,  where the line had grown, and most of the customers ahead of her were card carriers.