Goat Crooks and Rockrose Ticklers

The crook,
the "flail", and the
ladanum-impregnated goat's beard

I love the smell of rockrose. I used to run past some hedges of pink rockrose and always stopped to sniff it. Was it Cistus creticus?

I just learned that the crook and and flail possibly represented the tools of a goatherd in Egypt: the "crook" for managing goats and the "flail" for gathering the resins from rockrose.  The resins were used to make labdanum.

Given the choice I would rather spend eternity with something nice smelling (to show how RICH I was) than spend eternity showing what a disciplinarian I was. 

Give me a fabulous smelling resin-soaked goatbeard, my crook to manage my goats, and a tool to gather more resins and I'd be happy. But that's me.

References

• Labdanum (wikipedia, wikipedia)
• Cistus creticus is also known as C. incanus by The New Sunset Western Garden Book. Very drought tolerant. I think I see a non-native plant in my future for an experiment in resin gathering.