Date Posted:Sun, January 28 2024, 17:24:48 Author: JudithONH Subject: QOTD for Monday 29 January 2024
The following quote is from An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 21, “The Minister’s Cat,” Copyright 2009 by Diana Gabaldon, all rights reserved.
“It had been a couple of months before they left the Ridge. Unable to sleep one night, he’d gone out into the woods, and roaming restlessly to and fro, had encountered Claire, kneeling in a hollow full of white flowers, their shapes like a mist around her.
He’d just sat down then and watched her at her gathering, as she broke stems and stripped leaves into her basket. …
‘Most plants, though, are troubled by daylight insects, and so they begin to secrete their useful compounds at dawn; the concentration rises as the day waxes – but then, when the sun gets too hot, some of the oils will begin to vaporize from the leaves, and the plant will stop producing them. So most of the very aromatic plants, you pick in the late morning. And so the shamans and the herbalists tell their apprentices to take one plan in the dark of the moon and another at midday – thus making it a superstition, hmm?’ Her voice was rather dry, but still amused.”
