Vetiver, the root that holds the floor
The grass you smell before you see — and the root that does the real work.
Vetiver is a grass, but nobody keeps it for the blades. It is the root — dense, fibrous, holding the hillside together — that the tradition reaches for.
Washed into a floor, it holds what a broom cannot reach. Its scent is the smell of a house being closed for the night: cool, deep, a little damp.
New-moon work favours it — the phase for sweeping toward the door, for beginning small and in the dark.