Autumn in Greece

As Spring heads toward the mid-Atlantic, I keep thinking about Autumn for some reason. It's always been my favorite season, but sometimes I feel like it falls off my radar each year as it's also always the season for midterms, fellowship applications, and student conferences. This year was no exception, although seeing as it was my first year back in Baltimore after a year in Greece, I made sure to traverse my neighborhood for signs of Autumn. As Spring approaches, I'll do the same - I'm already seeing crocuses starting to bloom on my regular jogs.

On the other hand, I feel I was incredibly lucky to experience Autumn in Greece last year, too. Before my Regular Year at the ASCSA, I had only seen the summer side of Greece. Autumn of 2010 was my first exposure to a whole new world of temperatures, colors, and light within the Greek landscape. This was particularly evident during Trip III, Central Greece. Here are a few of my favorite images:

A perennial yellow crocus (κρόκος)

Fog over Hosios Loukos

A tree at a rest stop near Trikala

Reds at Meteora

At a tholos tomb near Pharsalos

Sunset over Lebedaia

 The Valley of the Muses

Aromatic Rosemary

One of my favorite occasional blogs, The Cloisters' The Medieval Garden Enclosed, has a new blog post up about rosemary. I learned that rosemary is a member of the mint family, and that it is native to the Mediterranean.

Reading about rosemary reminded me of how we'd find it in abundance in Greece, as you can see in detail above at the Temple of Ammon Zeus at Potidaea in the Chalkidike, and I also remember it quite clearly from Lavrion, where the plant was covered in a magnificent spider web.

Read more here about rosemary, from the Met: The Virtues of Rosemary.

squirting cucumbers

On Trip IV, we'd often encounter these plants which we called "squirting cucumbers," as they'd squirt when you stepped (or jumped) on them. Fun times.

(squirting cucumbers at Tiryns)

I've just learned that they're actually called Ecballium elaterium, and I ran across a reference to them in Vivian Nutton's Ancient Medicine:

"Even the squirting cucumber, whose purgative properties are well established, may have been used as an emmenagogue or an oxytocic as much for symbolic as for practically evaluated reasons: its capacity to eject its seeds forcefully made it an appropriate plant to use when wishing to expel an unwanted conception, an afterbirth or a suppressed menstrual period."

So there you have it. I wonder what a "suppressed menstrual period" is? And according to Wikipedia, the squirting cucumber is today used in Turkey to treat sinus problems. But I think they're best for jumping on - the archaeologist's version of a water balloon fight, perhaps?