Chartreuse

I've always loved both the word chartreuse and the color, a yellowish green or greenish yellow that graces my front yard every February when the helleborus argutifolius pops out in my front yard garden. Doing a little research, I recently learned that the word chartreuse is a toponym, or a word derived from a place.

The Chartreuse Mountain range in Grenoble, France, was the home of the Carthusian monastery, La Grande Chartreuse, where the monks produced the aromatic liqueur called Chartreuse.

I think I tasted chartreuse once but I didn't like it much. I did enjoy this snippet of poetry, though, found online:


Lost with the sun in a chartreuse wood, afflicted
by associations, flies, thirst, and by
a growing chill my clothes cannot keep out ...


--Elinor Wilner