Family Mint

MMint: lively, bright, refreshing, sweet, aromatic. Moroccan mint tea, mint Mojitos, grasshopper pie: there is so much to love about mint. It even has a creation myth, in which a jealous Persephone turns a lovely nymph named Minthe into this herbaceous bush.

My own love affair with mint began as a young child in our backyard garden in a small New Jersey community. My country-boy father had brought my mother from New York City to a newly cleared acre of land in his hometown. Woods, not buildings, surrounded their plot. Old photographs show my mother’s transformation: black and white, dark-lipsticked shots of her glamorous nights out with friends, then the faded pink-and-purple-color Kodak photos of a small cottage sitting in the middle of a mud field, a wooden plank allowing my 3-year-old self access to the front door, and my mother in a headscarf.

My earliest memories include my parents in the yard, digging, planting, watering, laying out new paths and plots. Dad showed Mom and me how to plant seeds and even how to spread manure as fertilizer. As Mom learned the names of every plant, the difference between an annual and a perennial, and the requirements of sun and shade, she taught me. I even learned to read the plant names on the colorful seed packets we used as markers at the end of each row.

One plant, however, did not come from seed. A neighbor left the gift plant in a cardboard box with a welcome note. My mother scoffed at it. A mess of tangled runners with wilted and mud-covered leaves, it looked mostly dead. But Dad recognized it right away.

“That’s apple mint,” he told Mom. “Plant it. You can’t kill it. And the smell is beautiful.” She did plant it, and the apple mint patch became the most well-established section of our herb and vegetable garden. It was thick and lush, and the way its velvety, silvery green leaves on their square stalks held glistening dew drops every morning enchanted me. I loved to pick a leaf and pierce it with my fingernail, inhaling the scent. Then I would bite down and taste the “mint juice.” Raspberry bushes were next to the mint, so I would lie there on the ground, eating the ambrosial ruby berries warmed by the sun. Sometimes I would wrap a mint leaf around one, combining flavors for maximum deliciousness.

Apple mint flavor is more mellow than peppermint or spearmint. My mother found that it made the perfect iced tea, especially when mixed with fresh orange juice. This became the Summer drink of my childhood, and remains so today, because my first transplant from my mother’s garden to my own when we bought our house was a big clump of apple mint. Yes, it was a mass of tangled runners—with wilted and mud-covered leaves—that looked mostly dead. But in no time, it was reaching for the sun and was unstoppable. I even allowed it to invade my brick paths, just to experience the delightful aroma of its crushed leaves underfoot. Apple mint iced tea with orange juice became the drink that my family and all our visitors expected every Summer, each June’s first pitcher a cause for celebration.

Eventually my parents passed and, that Winter, their house was sold. I visited the new owner the following Summer in hopes of getting a peek at what she had done with Mom’s beautiful garden—and perhaps asking for a cutting or two of fondly remembered perennials.

The new owner was pleased to show me her home renovations. Then she said, “Oh! Let me show you our new backyard,” and we stepped out back to … to … nothing. Every fruit tree, every garden, the birch grove, the raspberries, the mint—all had vanished. There was just lawn, unbroken by any colors or shapes. My eyes filled with tears, and the proud new owner patted my shoulder, thinking that I was crying over the loss of my parents, not understanding that they and their garden were the same loss for me.

Deeply sad all the way home, I went directly to my own garden’s apple mint patch, now a towering mass of purple blooms, each bouncing up and down with the frenzy of honeybees, and silently thanked the plants for being a direct link to my past, for still being there so that I could smell and taste the beauty of my childhood.

Later, in retirement, I decided to gift myself, for the very first time, the grand luxury of hiring a landscaping firm to help me re-design my garden. It had become irretrievably wild over my years of working (and raising two sons whose sole interest in the garden was turning it into a repository for lost hockey pucks and lacrosse balls). The landscapers assured me that they would try to save as many perennials as they could by potting them until they could be replanted. I was adamant that I especially wanted some of the mint plants saved. I explained that it was all I had left of my mother’s garden.

Alas, when the time came to begin replanting in the new soil, my beloved apple mint was nowhere to be found. The workers had simply taken all the disinterred Spring bulbs, along with any plants that were not easily repotted, and flung them away over the tall back fence into some wild property owned by the town.

This was a loss I could not accept. Furiously, I circled the town land until I found a gap in its fence, then I bushwhacked my way through dense growth until I could spot the back of my house. Right along the fence, among piles of bulbs and dead flowers, was a mess of tangled runners, with wilted and mud-covered leaves, that looked mostly dead.

“There you are,” I whispered, as I scooped up the slimy mess. I planted what I could of the ragged remnants and hoped that my rich new soil’s hospitality would work some magic. That Summer, a few healthy mint plants returned, enough to make a batch of Summer iced tea, and enough to give me hope. I began teaching my 2-year-old granddaughter Caylee about my mint and its profusion of scent. She took pleasure in smelling the leaves I gave her to sample. “Ummm, yummy!” she declared.

After the long quarantined Winter of 2020, I took joy in the Spring return of the garden, made all the more so because of the riotous return of the most rambunctious mint. Dad was right; you can’t kill it. I had to corral its exuberant spread, and much of it made its way to some of my other gardens.

Now, every day when Caylee leaves my house, she asks me for a mint leaf to take home with her. Fortunately, even in Winter there are always a few stalwart leaves that oblige. She settles in her car seat, pierces the proffered leaf with her fingernail, inhales the scent, and says: “Umm, beautiful.”

It won’t be long before my new mint lover is making her own Summer iced tea and passing the mint along to her children.

I look forward to tasting some. ❖