How to write: add herbs

You have to enjoy writing to ensure that your readers love reading your stories. One way I make sure I love it is by finding out interesting things to add to the story. In my novel I, Rhiannon Books One and Two (which will be available free on Kindle soon) I added some cool stuff I’d discovered about Celts and their favourite herbs.

Rhiannon is a beautiful young Celtic woman who’s about to be married off to a horrible stinky old man (who already has a few hag-wives) to unite the tribe against the Romans who are about to invade. Every chapter title is the name of a plant the Celts loved, with the Welsh and Latin translations. In this excerpt, she’s touring the garden around her parents’ roundhouse with her mother, Mair, who tells her:  

“I planted this garden when your father and I were newlywed,” she said, her head tilted up so she could taste the air. “It’s full of old friends.”
Rhiannon looked at her quizzically but her mother did not notice. She was gazing up at the leaves of her favourite tree, a graceful silver birch planted to the right of the wooden gate which opened out onto the hillside and in to the path leading to the roundhouse. It was such a still evening, the leaves hardly stirred and the smooth trunk was flushed pink, mirroring the colour of the sky above the bosom of the hill.
“If you are dyeing linen, the bark of this tree will give you a warm brown the colour of freshly-tilled earth,” she said, her thin fingers with their ragged nails nervously patting the trunk. Privately, and with a pang that was a physical pain under her ribcage, Mair wondered how much longer the birch would stand in its place near the gate. Whenever she went to the market and bought frivolous things for her daughter from travelling merchants, she heard increasingly gory horror stories about the havoc wreaked in other parts by the Mighty Ones. Rhiannon was always pleased to see her mother if a decorated comb or jewelled bracelet were on offer and was never interested in news of the Mechteyrnedd.
Mair shivered and dug her pointed chin into the comforting, prickly wool of her cape. She’d try to give Rhiannon enough knowledge to get her by, although whether she’d remember it all or not was disputable.
“Black comes from this tree, the elder.” Mair stood on tiptoe and plucked an umbel of creamy flowers. Their perfume reminded her so strongly of happy, carefree days of past summers she couldn’t hide the tremor in her voice when she said: “In September, the black berries will come. Use them to treat colds and chills or make wine from them. And, dig up a little root if someone is in need of a purge.”
“Mair!” Rhiannon snorted contemptuously. “I’m not like you. I won’t be encouraging all the wastrels in the settlement to come banging on my door for cures.”
“Your own children may need your skills, though,” Mair said, looking up at her defiantly.
“Go on, then,” Rhiannon sighed.
Mair led her further along the circular grassed area between the fence and the house. “My cloak’s colours come from the roots of this goose grass,” she said, sinking to her knees and flicking her fingertips through the soft green tufts. “You can get reds and oranges of different strengths. Depending on the shade you want, add more or less water to the pot and boil the roots in it.” How many skeins of wool had she coloured for her family, hanks she had lifted from the cauldron with pointed sticks, coils that steamed, some like a liver ripped from a carcass, others like dew lifting from the orange fungi that grew on fallen trunks in the woods.
“Blues are similar,” she continued, struggling to keep her voice even. “You can achieve different shades by using berries of varying degrees of ripeness. And, for yellow, pick young shoots of various grasses and branches.”    
 “And herbs, Mair?” Rhiannon asked insistently. She felt impatient with her mother for kneeling in the long grass. There was no time to waste gardening. “Which are the ones I’ll most need to know about?”
“Ah, Holly is the expert for she comes from Londinium, where the Mechteyrnedd are growing herbs from all over their Empire”, she said, getting to her feet with an effort. Suddenly, she felt very old. “She knows of some and has passed on all she has learnt to me although I’ve not been able to buy any of the new ones at the market yet. My favourite is our own Celtic herb, borage, whose name means courage. See, it is growing here under this hawthorn bush and has these beautiful black-centred, blue-petalled flowers – like your eyes. Yet its leaves are quite rough.”
Mair plucked a sprig and held it to her breast. She continued: “It’s the most important herb of all and an infusion of it can give heart to a warrior. Another I love is sweet cicely, this tall, lacy plant with its bowl-shaped clusters of flowers. See how pretty the white flowers are on the stalks flecked with red. It has always reminded me of Gwyn for it has his delicacy. It adds sweetness to cabbage and its roots are delicious boiled and buttered. I love it as a plant but I rarely use it in the kitchen as it’s said to be an aphrodisiac.”
“I will never serve it to Huw, then,” Rhiannon commented bitterly.
“No, I wouldn’t if I were you,” Mair replied quickly. She flushed an ugly red. “And look,” she said, dismissing cicely and going to a blue-green leaved shrub near the vegetable patch, “here is the juniper, whose berries I crush and sprinkle on cabbage. And I rub them into the pork rind with salt before I cook the meat.”
"Mair, stop!” Rhiannon said, tearing at the juniper bush. “I can’t take in any more. I’m certain Huw’s wives never bother to flavour his meat or make a cure for his impotence – why should I? Unless you can show me a herb or a tree or a blasted insect that will make him drop dead on the spot, why should I care about any of these plants? It’s a waste of time!”  
“For yourself, child. You should know for yourself. Because knowledge makes you strong.”