Minthe Nymph

With the fresh, delicate snap of a leaf plucked just after dawn, its perfume comes to you, a green, verdant whisper from some secret, long-forgotten garden. Mint, that most enchanting of botanicals, prized from antiquity: its dried leaves were discovered in the echo-filled inner chambers of the Egyptian pyramids, dating back thousands of years before the Common Era, a testament to its ancient allure. The Romans, too, known for their pursuit of art-de-vivre, wove it throughout their existence: crowns of mint adorned the brows of noblemen, and its leaves were used to give scent to the rejuvenating baths that defined the empire. During the Crusades, mint travelled to Britain; in the Middle Ages, behind the stone-walls that enclosed their herbularius, it was cultivated by diligent monks—guided by the Rule of Saint Benedict, they tended to the plant with meticulous attentions, the air around them thick with sacred silence, broken only by the gentle scraping of their trowels upon the damp ea