Why Bayberry Island,

you may ask?

Well, because, bayberry. It's all over the east coast. It's on a lot of islands. And I wanted my island for the Summerhood Island series to be an island that could be anywhere, or at least more places than specifically off the coast of southeastern MA that could be seen from Aquinnah if you put a quarter in the binoculars at the edge of the cliffs and looked to your right.

Yeah. That island. Only a little broader in scope. 

So that's why I chose Bayberry out of all the names suggested to me for Jessie's island. And here's  a little discourse on the bayberry plant. You don't have to read the whole thing. You may skim. You have my permission.

Waxing eloquent on wax myrtle

·         Thursday, October 2, 2014

The Narrow-leaved Candleberry Myrtle 

One of the most popular (and prolific) trees in the Lowcountry is the wax myrtle (Myrica cerifera). This aromatic shrub grows everywhere – behind the dunes line on beaches, in woods along the marsh edges and in the natural thickets that often surround our shopping centers and building lots. Since it is unusually hardy and will take salt, wind and heat, the wax myrtle has become an extremely popular landscaping ornamental. There is hardly a landscaping plan that omits the versatile myrtle, especially for high-abuse places such as parking lot entrances and along roadways.

The wax myrtle has as many names as it has uses, and a remarkable historical record. It is variously known as Sweet Myrtle, Sweet Bay, Bayberry, Waxberry, Wild Tea, Tea Box, Tallow Bush, Merkle, Mucklebush, Mickleberry and, last but not least, the Candleberry Tree. For centuries, Lowcountry cooks have been using the slender, pungently “sweet bay” leaves to flavor stews and broths.

Yet, if we lived a century or two ago, the myrtle would have a far greater significance to us than mere food flavoring. It was not given the name “wax” myrtle for nought. The tree’s berries provided the wax to make the bayberry candles so popular for their aroma.

If you get up close and personal to a wax myrtle right now, you’ll find that it is chock-filled with clumps of small, round, greyish-blue berries. It was from these berries, harvested in the fall, that the wax was made for candles. The berries were placed in boiling vats, and as the wax rose to the top, it was skimmed off and strained. This process was repeated again and again until a cake of bayberry wax was formed. Enormous amounts of bayberries were required to produce a single pound of wax.

In 1732, English naturalist Mark Catesby described the annual fall ritual of harvesting bayberries and making wax from the bush he named the “Narrow-leaved Candleberry Myrtle.”

Wrote Catesby, “In November and December, at which time the berries are mature, a man with his family will remove from his home to some island or sandbanks near the sea, where these trees most abound, taking with him kettles to boil the berries in. He builds a hut with palmetto leaves, for the shelter of himself and family while they stay, which is commonly three or four weeks.

“The man cuts down the trees, while the children strip off the berries into a porridge pot; and having put water to them, they boil them until the oil floats, which is skimmed off into another vessel. This is repeated until there remains no more oil. This, when cold, hardens to the consistency of wax, and is of a dirty green color. They then boil it again, and clarify it in kettles which gives it a transparent greenness.”

In olden times, candles were generally made from two types of material, tallow and beeswax. Those made from natural beeswax burned with a more pleasant odor and generally gave off a more stable light. Tallow candles were usually made from fat extracted from beef and mutton but had a lower melting point and burned faster. Bayberry candles were considered better than those made of tallow and were probably the most familiar type of candle used in colonial America.

English explorer John Lawson praised them, writing in 1700, “the Berry yields a wax that makes candles the most lasting and of the sweetest smell imaginable. Some mix half Tallow with this Wax, others use it without mixture; and these are fit for a Lady’s Chamber.”

The wax myrtle was also esteemed for its medicinal properties. Root bark from the tree was collected in fall and boiled in water, producing an astringent and stimulant thought to be both a headache remedy and a curative for scrofula, jaundice, diarrhea and dysentery. A tea made from the leaves was thought to relieve a backache and would also “clean out the kidneys” and “overcome chills.”

Bay leaves were also thought to be an excellent insect repellant. Leaves were placed under and over beef at slaughtering time to keep flies away. Branches were strewn around houses, chicken coops and in beds to repel fleas. Rich in tannin, they were also used for tanning leather during the Civil War.

All in all, the wax myrtle is a simply wonderful shrub. It grows in sand; it will take both sun or shade. It looks wonderful when it is pruned ornamentally and just as good when it is left to its own abandon. Birds love the tree, both for nesting and for its berries. It even smells good.

Of all the wonderful natural abundance we have here on our coast, the wax myrtle is right up at the top in my estimation.

Next time you smell the alluring scent of a bayberry candle, give the valiant wax myrtle an appreciative nod. It has been doing good duty to both man and nature for a long time.

Suzannah Smith Miles is a writer and Lowcountry and Civil War historian.

I just got back

 from my week’s "vacation" on that island suspiciously similar to Bayberry Island, otherwise known as Cuttyhunk .  

So much crammed into five days on the island and two days of travel.  Time spent with older relatives and newer ones.  The newer relatives tended to have less hair and wear less clothing.  

Here is Will doing a brilliant imitation of his uncle Matthew at a similar age, and his great grandpa Jay in his later years. 

Notice the complete lack of butt and the chicken legs.  This seems to be a trait which has been passed down generations even when there was no genetic link.  

This also holds true for Will’s twin

sister Kenley, who has somehow managed to capture my mother’s dramatic genes out of thin air.

This was a week of family, on and off the island.  And it was a week of juxtaposition - of past, present, and future.

I began to write when I first lived on Cuttyhunk.  And here I am over thirty years later, and I’m doing a book signing as a fundraiser for the same Cuttyhunk library that saved my life those first quiet and lonely springs on the island.

My character Jessie  Silva and I both read our way through that library.

On this last trip I was witness to the Fourth of July golf cart parade, held this year on the fifth due to hurricane Arthur, who graced us with his presence on the fourth.  

I was around for the first Fourth of July golf cart parade.

And leaving the island after my whirlwind trip, those of us on the ferry were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the Charles Morgan, last of the wooden whaleboats, restored and docked temporarily in New Bedford harbor.

I had no idea where this blog was going when I began it; but where it has gone is full circle.  From my father’s skinny legs

to my toddler grand nephew’s chicken thighs, seeing  my mother’s dramatic flair mirrored in my grand niece’s face. 

Three decades of a Fourth of July parade, watched this year from the lawn of the library that saved my sanity so many lonely winters and springs, that same library where I was setting up for a book signing of my own book, a book about a girl who lives on an island.  The island so suspiciously similar to Cuttyhunk, with an old-fashioned library almost exactly like the one whose lawn I sat on for the signing.

Whaleboats,

parades,

generations.

This is the second book I’ve written about this island, and there will be more.  It’s an island rich in history and full of potential for the future.  It is generations of drama, of continuity and of change. 

Leaving Cuttyhunk this past week I realize I may have had to add physical land mass to Bayberry in order to fit all my character Jessie’s adventures in, but even at its original size,

it’s an island far too full of life to fit into just one book.

So I’m going away

but just for a week this time, up to my own Bayberry Island.  On the way I’ll visit my mother, who probably won’t remember me, an aunt who certainly will, perhaps a cousin or two.  Once I’m on my island I’ll have my sister and my nephew, my brother-in-law and his daughter and her twins.

My family has stretched in a different direction, away from my father’s side, most of whom are gone, and the rest far away.  My partner’s family is on the West Coast and I haven’t seen them in years.  On my mother’s side I have family, but illness and proximity have kept me from really getting to know the cousins and their children.  My foster child and my grandchild live seven hours away, an impossible drive for me. They have their own lives; ones that I’m not really a part of now.  And that’s okay, I was there when they needed me to be there.

And so, by virtue of my time on the island my family has stretched into my sister and her husband’s.  It’s funny in a way, because for more than twenty years I ran away from family.  I lived alone, traveled alone, and spent as much time as possible with strangers.  When I needed family I made my own.  Now as I grow older and more frail I am slowly reconnecting with the very people I distanced myself from.  Now I can’t really remember why I ran in the first place, although at the time it seemed the only way I could live my life.

Times change, people change.  Isn’t that the way the saying goes?  And I do believe that. I believe people can change.  Because I know I have changed.

I don't need to hide away on an island 14 miles from the mainland any longer. When I go there I go to reconnect. with people I know, and those I have yet to meet. I go to reconnect with the past that was a vital part of shaping who I am now. And with my nephew, with my sister's grandchildren I can begin to experience a future I would never have imagined in my youth, but which feels like home now.

For once . . .

I listened to reason. Sort of. 

A few posts ago I published my revised bio for grown-ups.  (I once had a girlfriend who informed me that I would never be a grown-up because real grown-ups referred to themselves as adults.  Well, there you have it.)  

Anyway, what I was supposed to be writing was a longer, more complete bio than the one on the back of the book, one that could be handed out by teachers as part of a downloadable package.  (Assuming, of course, that there were teachers who wanted to use the book in their classroom.)

So I did-

Hi.

My name is Margo and I was born in a small town in East Tennessee.  When I was growing up I loved animals and we always had dogs and cats in the house.  I even had a horse named Lady who lived on a farm about a half-mile away and I would walk over there and catch her in the field by rattling a can of dried corn.  Then I would put a halter on her and walk her over to the barn and saddle her so I could ride her.

  

She was so big I had to climb up on the fence rail to put the saddle on her and her back was so wide my legs stuck out almost straight.

When I was thirteen I started to work in my aunt’s pet shop.  I trained a monkey to walk on a halter and wear diapers.  Monkeys don’t care where they poop so you can’t house train them, but they won’t poop in their diapers.  I used to take the monkey to schools where she would sit on my shoulder and I would talk to the kids about animals.  

Once I brought the monkey home but my mother wouldn’t let it in the house.  She said she had to draw the line somewhere.

(this is a lot like the line she drew)

After high school and college I worked at a lot of jobs.  For a while I designed lights in the theater.

That was fun.  I traveled around the country for years.

Then I moved to an island and learned how to cook.  I lived on the island for fifteen years and ran and inn and restaurant with my sister.  That’s where I got the inspiration for Jessie’s island.  I started out with the real island     

but it wasn’t big enough so I had to add cliffs on one end and a lighthouse on the other, and make it wider and put more roads in.  Then of course it wasn’t the same island anymore so I had to come up with a new name.  There isn’t any real Bayberry island but there’s this island that looks a lot like it and that’s where l lived.

The End

Bayberry Island!

And the winner of the name contest for Jessie's island  is Bayberry Island!
Thanks to all who participated. There were several people who suggested this name, so the book will go to the one who suggested it first.  I'll let you know as soon as we have the fall launch date for Coyote Summer!

Any island in a storm . . .

Hello, my friends,

I’m in a quandary. I’ve got a series of books set on an island much like Cuttyhunk, but not Cuttyhunk, because I had to add a beach here and some cliffs there and a lighthouse over on that bit and . . .

You see my problem. It’s no longer Cuttyhunk. But it needs a name. The series is called the Summerhood Island series, but I don’t like Summerhood as the name of the actual island. It sounds fake, and anyway, people live on it all year round.

So here’s the deal. Give me a suggestion for a name. Or as many as you want. If I pick your name for Jessie’s island I will send you a personalized advance copy of the first book of the series.

Here’s the catch. You have to submit the name on my actual blogspot. wwwsummerhoodisland.blogspot.com.  Put in your email where it says follow summerhoodisland by email (right hand side half way down). 

That way I have your email if you win, and I’ll email you for an address to send the book and what you’d like me to say. Put the title idea(s) themselves in the comments area. 

All suggestions have to be in by May 30, so get cracking!

And thank you,

margo