A little late or a little early

I'm cleaning out some old files, and today I ran across this link (here), that, amazingly is still live, to a little spot by our local ABC news about Pat Whetham's Organic CSA farm. Now it's late to be posting it for last year, but for the coming season it's spot on!

Time to be signing on for a share is coming up in your neighborhood, and here in Genesee County, Michigan last week Pat wrote to her mailing list about the series of organic gardening classes she's offering right there on her farm. She's an expert at organic farming and gardening, having done it for many years and being integrally involved in the Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance (MOFFA). She was even an organic inspector for certifying farms at one time, which looks like a fascinating kind of a job.

More About Bay Laurel Infused Sugar

This is a Ragu spaghetti sauce jar that I used for the bay laurel infused sugar. Eight fresh leaves that I opened slits in the leaves. Use 14 dried leaves if you wish. Three cups of sugar just fit into the jar. You then just shake the jar every day for two weeks or so. You can use it in the sugar cookie recipe I gave you in the January 29, 2009 posting. You can give the extra sugar with a copy of the recipe as a gift. The possibilities are up to you!

a small cheap pleasure

Flowers from the sprouted top of a daikon radish. A pretty little reminder of life in the dead of winter. And free.
Everyone knows about sprouting the discarded tops of root veggies, so I won't go into the how-to. Just a reminder to do it.
(For a larger picture, click on the photo.)
Just look at the fine veining of color in these delicate petals. Lovely.



I feel really kinda strange, watching young bloggers who are discovering thriftiness and "making do" for the first time. Everyone is saying "green" now, and the three R's - reduce, recycle, reuse - suddenly trendy in a big way with mainstream Americans. I hope it's not a passing fad, to be thrown in the rubbish bin when the economy picks up again.
On this subject, AOL just ran a feature about the top 25 thrifty ideas from its subscribers, and except for the one about grinding your own meat, I have to admit - I already do all of those thrifty things. Thriftiness is a way of life around here. I'm so hip (she said with an ironic sigh.)
But in the end, I say about this sudden trend of 'frugal living made cool', more power to 'em.

More Snow!

It was pretty peaceful on our street after the latest snowstorm. It is just one storm after the other. Not a lot of snow each time, but it is beginning to pile up! Getting closer to spring! Hope it gets here quick!

Bay Laurel Infused Sugar

We have two different kinds of bay laurels. This one is the more traditional one. Sort of a Y shaped form. Remember bays do better with trimming. We have the don't prune, don't shape policy at our house! Most everything has that wild over the top look! I'm going to make some infused sugar with 8 fresh bay leaves (14 dry) from this tree and layer them with 3 cups of sugar. Shake it every day. It takes about 2 weeks for use. Just in time for Valentine's Day! The recipe is on a blog that I found from Canada called Food and Whine. The recipe is for Infused Sugar Sugar Cookies. The only thing I would add to the recipe is to use pasteurized egg white at the end to brush on the cookies to add additional infused sugar. You can purchase a carton of pasteurized egg whites in the grocery stores in the US. I haven't tried this recipe so hopefully we will all enjoy them. Let me know what you think!

A Good Day for Herbal Tea!

It is a cold, icy and icky day in the 'Burgh! It is a great day for an herbal cup of tea. It is National Hot Tea month and I pretty much forgot. So I thought I would go out with a bang! I made this cup of herbal tea this afternoon. Some crushed lemon verbena, rose petals, lavender, stevia, peppermint, winter savory in my magic basket. I do get carried away. It was a little too intense. So I would combine lemon verbena with the stevia and peppermint or the rose petals, lavender and winter savory with some stevia. If you like sweet in your tea, you will love the dried stevia. It is very good. I only put one or two leaves in and it is more than sweet enough for me. It is fun to experiment and hopefully I will give you a few more ideas before the end of the National Hot Tea celebration. Every day whether it be cold or hot is a good day for tea!

Fun for a snowy (icy) morning

Susan Hess, the farmgirl over at Farm at Coventry tagged me for this game, so here goes...

6th Picture Meme!
Here are the rules to the photo meme
1.Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures
2.Go to the 6th Folder, then pick the 6th picture in that folder
3.Post that picture on your blog and tell the story that goes along with the picture.
4.Tag 6 other people that you know or don’t know to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog or an e-mail letting them know you chose them.
This picture was taken February 6, 2008 towards evening.
There isn't a great story about this, except that where I live, I have nearly a 360 degree view of the horizon. Since moving here 4 years ago, I have seen more rainbows than in the previous 40 some years all put together.

We walk out in the evening to get into the car, and the stars are so bright they nearly slap you. When there is an eclipse or a meteor shower, we can sit on the deck for hours just watching in the still summer coolness, listening to the cicadas and the nightlife in the woods nearby.

My personal favorite thing about this location is that it is possible to lie on your back on the deck and not see anything except the sky. When a storm is coming in, it feels as if you are IN the sky, and lying there it is as if there is nobody else in the world, nothing else... just you and the swirling, whirling clouds and the vast power of the forces of nature. At a certain point, it seems that if you don't get up and get inside you'll be sucked up into the sky and never be heard from again.

On any given day, there will be some wonder outside; some reason to call to someone, "hey! check out this cloud formation!" or, "look at the colors over toward Mount Joy!"

On the Fourth of July, we can watch fireworks in three different towns at one time, just sitting on the deck.

One day my daughter and I were driving into town, and I'd pulled over the car to look at some cloud or something in the sky. It's a country road... no big deal. As I put the car back into gear, she looked at me and said, "thanks for being the kind of mom who shows me the sky."

It makes me giggle a little. My grandfather was the one who showed us, mostly. If I had thanked him, he would have grunted and groused and said, "oh garsh-a monkeys, it's right there".

So that's my story.

I'm tagging:

Aquarian Bath

The Herbfarmer at Possum Creek

Ask the Herbalist

Little Big Voice

Prairieland Herbs

and

Faerie Made

Balance of Nature!

We looked out our front door window yesterday and got a picture of this hawk. It may have been a young red tail hawk. Usually the small birds leave the area when the hawks are in the vicinity. We have a lot of wildlife in our residential area. He is keeping the balance of nature.

Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds

created by http://www.wordle.net/

One World - One Heart

The winners have been chosen! They are (I really hope to be doing this correctly, by the way):

Robin at DreamsofBlueAcadia.blogspot.com
Connie at CettaCheese.blogspot.com
Donna at DSchrader.blogspot.com

Emails have gone out, and I am just waiting to get the addresses so that the first issue can go out. Congrats everyone. This was really fun. Thanks for letting me join in!


We are participating in this third annual event, One World - One Heart, with bloggers from around the world. Leave a comment on this post before February 12th for your chance to win.

The drawing will award 3 lucky winners with subscriptions to The Essential Herbal Magazine for one year - a prize that lasts all year long!


To view a free copy now, click on the link on the sidebar>>> to download.

When you enter our give-away by leaving a comment on this post, please be sure to include an email address so we can contact you if you are the winner. Drawing is to be held on February 11th and the winner will be announced on Feb. 12th. Good Luck!

Just a few more hours to enter! Will shut down voting at 5pm est, and draw at 6pm est. Come back to see if you've won!

Bay Laurel-2009 Herb of the Year

The container on the left in this photo is Laurus nobilis or Bay Laurel or Sweet Bay. This one is over my head and I'm 5'6" tall. Bay laurel is a native of the Mediterranean area. In ancient Greece, poets and scholars were crowned with wreathes of bay. Hence, the term poet laureate was coined.

If you live in Zone 7 or higher, you should be able to grow bay in the ground. Here in the 'Burgh, we have to have it in a container and take it inside during the winter. This one is about 6-1/2 feet tall. It is slow to germinate from seeds or cuttings (taking up to six months to root). So you should buy an actively developing young potted plant. Bay needs full sun and prefers dryish soil and avoid mulching. You do need to provide moderate moisture in summer, especially if you grow it in a container. It does best if it is pruned on a regular basis.

Bays are susceptible to mites, scale and mealy bugs indoors, but once they come outside, they mostly lose those problems. You need to be vigilante when they are outdoors that the scale or other insects do not reoccur. Here is an article by Sandy Feather on the treatment of scale insects which is the main problem for bay laurels indoors even though it is for a ficus tree the treatment for bay would be the same. More in the coming days.

Pomander Update

These pomanders don't look much different than when they went into this bowl weeks ago. I think the thick skin has impeded the drying process. Glad I didn't have to give them as a Christmas present. Maybe they will be ready for this coming Christmas! Hope so. Will be talking about the herb of the year, bay laurel later this week.

Brief January Thaw!

What a difference a day makes! 50 degrees yesterday and 18 degrees today! We got rid of some of the snow. Still have about eight weeks of winter left. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

It's almost February! Where has the long dark winter gone?

I know that the northern readers are wanting to come down here and give me a talking to about my thinking that winter is almost over. My tongue is planted firmly in my cheek, because I know the worst is yet to come. I like to think about spring though. It makes winter more bearable.

To be honest, I'm not much of a seed starter. Lancaster County is awash with greenhouses, herb farms, and the month of May (and parts of April and June) is crammed with herb festivals and herb farm open houses. It is a gardener's dream, and when I read of the people in other parts of the country who have nothing much except a hardware store or big-box store selection, I appreciate it even more.

So mostly, that is how my garden comes to life. Mostly I transplant what others have started and nurtured to a point that it might actually survive me.
What manages to survive my forgetfulness usually falls victim to the roving gangs of bunnies or the insatiably gnawing hunger of the unstoppable groundhog. Then there are the giant deer hoof prints I find in the garden, and the birds that sit waiting for the berries to ripen. But never mind that. If I think about that too much I might give up - and gardeners NEVER give up. So where was I?Oh. Right. We were talking about seed starting. There are parts of the country (and thriftier people than I) where seeds are the way to begin the garden. Many people wouldn't think of purchasing adolescent plants, and if they are vigilant, seeds will pay them back many times over.

We were talking on the Yahoo Group for The Essential Herbal Magazine, and some of the favorite seed sources can be found below:

Fedco Seeds

Horizon Herbs

ArborDay.Org

The Rosemary House

Botanical Interests

Heirloom Seeds

Rare Seeds at Baker Creek

Seed Savers

Landis Valley Museum Heirloom Seed Project

Abundant Life Seeds

They all have lots of great information, and I could spend several days just visiting seed websites. I DO grow most of my vegetables from seed. Things like eggplant, where I only need one or two plants, and melon, which takes forever to grow, I will buy the plants. Everything else in the veggie garden is from seed. Come to think of it, this should be a post about PLANTS! Maybe later.

While you're thinking about gardening, consider our book, The Essential Herbal ~ Under the Sun. There are several articles on different types of gardens, how to create good soil, how to care for seedlings, and get rid of pests.
We also have the CobraHead tool available on our website. This is one tool you don't want to be without when you are out there doing battle with the dandelion, the sour dock, and the bladderwort. This baby is ergonomically designed to help you get more bang for your buck. Less wasted energy, more effect. And it is one of the few tools that can take me through season after season without rusting, bending, or breaking.

And before the season gets started and you need something for those tired muscles, head over and get your supply of Gardener's Soap, Arnica Rub and Gardener's Tub Tea from our sister site: The Sibling Group!

Credit for the pansy picture goes to Deborah Stiffler. Deborah, of Scent-sational submitted this photo for the cover of the May/June '07 issue of The Essential Herbal.

Do you hear that? Me neither!

It would be hard to explain how much I do NOT want to be the kind of mom that holds my child back - through fear, guilt, or any of those motherly "gifts". As she's grown, she's done quite a bit of traveling without me, including 3 (now 4) foreign countries. It has never left me feeling anything except elation, knowing that she was having an experience... living her life as fully as a parent could hope. This time it feels a little bit different. This time it is a practice trip for college. This time she'll come back for a few months, and then fly from the nest. Oh sure, she'll be back, but it will never be quite the same again. From now on, she'll just be stopping by on her way to somewhere else.

That's what we want, isn't it? We want them to have been given the strength and fortitude to stand alone, to want to go ahead and leave us behind. Right?

The timing of this particular trip has driven this home for me. They left 2 days after her 18th birthday. A friend and I joked on the phone that I spent 18 years trying to keep her a safe distance from sex and drugs, and then 2 days later she goes to Amsterdam. Pretty funny.

She'll be back before I know it. And this will even be home for a while longer. It just felt like something that needed to be preserved.

So... otherwise, check out Radiance at HerbsfromtheLabyrinth.com. Sarah and I have been working on putting together a schedule of lunch time classes, every Wednesday through (I think) May. I hope she'll put up a list of classes on her site soon! I will get something up here next Weds. after I get home from Radiance. This coming Weds we will be doing a distillation demonstration. No charge for this one, bring your lunch and come check it out!

The new Yahoo! list for herb businesses, Grow Your Herb Business, has been talking up a storm, trying to help each other through the maze of social networking. Today was Twitter day. Follow me at www.twitter.com/essentialherbal. It is fun having other people who are as unsure as I am to bounce things off.

And with some sadness, I finally caved and started using Click 'n Ship for my parcel shipping. For 8 years I have enjoyed hand addressing the orders that come through here, but have realized that I can't keep up any more. That's good, but I'll miss that personal touch.

a helpful hint for frozen worm bins

My garage is pretty cold, even though it is attached to the house. I overwinter some marginally hardy potted plants out there, and, because my house is smallish, I also keep my worm bin just outside the laundry room door that opens to the garage.
I've harbored feral cats out there, with food and water and shelter from the wind, and learned that if the cat water has a skim of ice in the morning, the temps are dropping pretty low outdoors.

Well, this winter, the outdoor temperatures are frigid. BRRRR. Subzero and I mean Fahrenheit. No cats in the garage this year but my worm bin is still out there and after those subzero days in January 2009, I have been worried about the little guys. Anyone want wormcicles? I don't even like the image in my brain!
Not a big deal in the Karmic rotation (perhaps), but I'd still feel guilty if the little creatures froze solid.

My herd survived below freezing during winter 2007-8, in contrast to the instructions from every vermiculture authority I've read who say they start disappearing? what? around 40-something degrees.

Anyway, this winter My Experiment in Worm Survival has earned Positive but Surprising Results that I'll share with you now:

My bedding-food mixture was questionably stiff, and I thought I might be begging worms from the worm guy at the Extension again come spring (if his worms survived, that is), but last week a light bulb clicked on over my head:
I put a trouble light in the bin.
One light bulb, a few inches above the surface of the contents revived my bin and upon scratching the surface of the thawed bedding-food mass (they don't like light), I detected a lively red worm.
Success!

A caveat or two: The bedding is shredded bills and other paper, a fire hazard if it came in contact with a lightbulb. So I kept the lid propped open a tad for ventillation with one of my old cat towels barely covering the gap. Don't need to burn the house down for a few worms. Be thrifty, but be wise.

Quick Herbal Flavor!

We have been having great avocados from Chile this winter season. Our food comes from lots of different place in the world and different areas of our own country. I love a good herb mix. If you are lucky enough to live in Mechanicsburg, PA or Chagrin Falls OH, you have two great herb shops, The Rosemary House and The Village Herb Shop. If you are online a lot like I am, Penzey's has great herb combinations like the one in the photo. I sprinkle Tuscan Sunset on a lot of things, including avocados. It is a salt free blend. What is also great about Penzeys Spices is that there are suggestions for using their spices on each label. They also have a great catalog with recipe suggestions. A good herb blend is a quick fix for a recipe. Try it!

P.S. I missed National Pie Day today. I did find this link that you might like with pie recipes from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website.

Playing Tag!

Nancy and Susanna Reppert have tagged me!

Here are the rules to the photo meme: 6th Picture Meme!

1.Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.
2.Go to the 6th Folder, then pick the 6th picture in that folder.
3.Post that picture on your blog and the story that goes along with the picture.
4.Tag 6 other people that you know or don’t know to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog or an e-mail letting them know you chose them.

Here are the spoils of herbal and vegetable harvesting! A jar of dried dill, very easy to dry and keep for winter use. We had tons of Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes! They are our favorite cherry tomato.

So far, I have tagged Leslie at New Beekeeping Mistakes
Ximena at Ximena Heraud
Nicole at Nicole's Corner.

I will tag three others later today! I have tagged my best friend and her daughter. I have one more tag left! Who will I choose? I chose a fellow master gardener. Thanks for enjoying one of the fun childhood games I remember fondly.

The Crows Keep Us Laughing!

Most mornings we have crows sitting up in the trees around our house waiting for treats. They call each other. They are a very unified bunch. When the Herbal Husband puts scraps out for them. The crows come immediately, but they jump back when they try to pick the treats up. They think they are alive! This one on the birdbath was softening a peanut! Find something to make you laugh today!

Inauguration Day!

Today is a very important day for the Obamas, the Bidens and the United States of America. I have been working on this Capitol for quite some time. The Herbal Husband became a United States citizen in 1992! I was hoping to get this done sooner, but maybe there is a reason why the sampler has not been finished until this year! Yes, we can!

More Language of Flowers Presents

Santa brought several language of flowers books for Christmas. This is a favorite French one. It has a leather binding with the initials CC on the cover and lovely colored plates on the inside. There is a name and the date 1842 on the inside. So the book itself is probably a little bit earlier. The Herbal Husband can help me translate. Multi-talented that man!

Here it is... NEW STUFF!

Our old Herb Bead kit and booklet have sold out. At this point, having them reprinted would cost almost as much as we charge for them, so it's been on my mind for a while. Hundreds of them sold, and we still have a bunch of the Incense Kits. I thought they were a really neat idea - one that came to me specifically because the short leftover coils were being tossed from another job when I worked at the printer - no kidding. Bye-bye little kit. You were awesome!

So what did we come up with, you might ask? Well! If you're familiar with our series of short book(lets) that cover specific topics for about the same price as a magazine - you know what we did! The booklet is crammed with the gleanings of scores of beadmaking sessions and classes. I've learned a lot from students over the years, and so the reader gets the benefit of all of those conversations and experiments. Find the book and bead powders HERE

Additionally, we are making the Botanical Bead Powders for separate purchase. Right now you can choose from 6 different varieties, and that number may grow depending on demand. With the powders, you just add liquid and string your beads on a wire to dry. Everything is blended into the powder so that you get strong, durable berbal beads.

And guess what? We're having a contest too! Any purchase between Jan 15 and 31 has/will be entered into a drawing, with the winner getting a book and three of the powders! Enter today! Subscriptions and renewals DO count.

Festivus (or something) at the ranch

If you've been reading along, there may have been some mention of our being unable to muster up any excitement for the holidays this year. I know how odd that may seem. After all, we live amidst a Christmas Tree Farm!!! We ladle out cocoa to happy revelers for a whole month. You'd think we'd be about the jolliest people around, wouldn't you?
Well.. every 5 or 10 years we hit one that just doesn't make it. Between all of the businesses between us and the sick brother, it turned out to be this year. We warned the kids and relaxed. It was a nice holiday season, but there were no piles of gifts, no decorations, no BILLS.
We'd agreed to celebrate sometime in the middle of January when we felt like it. Because Molly's 18th (NO!! it CAN'T be!) birthday is this week along with her departure to distant lands, we set our sites on yesterday.
You won't be able to tell by the pictures, because I was behind the camera, but let me just tell you, I looked fabulous in my Festivus regalia.
Oh - btw - before we start we are only borrowing this name until we come up with something better. We were looking for something that didn't come with a bunch of rules, but when you look Festivus up, it is just as fraught with rules as any other celebration. Our relatives a few generations back used to make up their own days. We had Cow Tail, Ashy Poodle, and a few other that have slipped my mind at the moment. Anyhow, my brother John got on-line before our gathering and picked up all the rules, reminding us that there should be no gifts, that we had the date wrong, and that we should be arm wrestling. Lucky for him he is ill, or I would have had to take him down.
We haven't settled on the "traditional" meal for our new holiday, but have agreed that it shouldn't be difficult and settled on chicken from the butcher down the road. He does it up either fried or barbecued, and the boys all like the wings. Nice cole slaw there, too. Of course Maryanne CAN'T just let that go, so there was also a lovely salad and stuffed shells. Oh - about those clips on her head... I made her go get dressed up. Geesh!
One of Rob's friends, Bryce, decided that he really needed to see what this was all about. He unwittingly teased Molly about being a lefty - not knowing that he was in a veritable vipers den of lefties. Does he look a little frightened? He brought candied yams with mini marshmallows. He's alright.
We'd traded names back in December sometime, and decided that the wrapping should be a gruesome as possible. John wrapped Mark's gift in a Victoria's Secret bag, for instance, and the most prevalent wrapping paper had grimacing monkeys all over it.
We all went to our little homes and passed out by late afternoon. Perfect holiday if you ask me.
Now all we have to do is wait for this little pigeon's birthday, and it'll be weeks before anything else happens!

A Winter Wonderland AGAIN!

More snow last night! It is really nice when the snow comes on the weekend and we do not have to go anywhere So I will give you a break from other things and show you the garden in winter. The first picture is our front garden.

This picture is of my herb garden. It would be nice to keep some of this snow cover for a while. It is protection from the cold wind and an insulator.

We got about six total inches as seen on our stone bench on the patio and in the stone container.












The sparrows love to take baths in the birdbath on a cold winter day. The female cardinal was also in the area on the sunflower feeder. Hope you enjoyed a little snow today. Stay warm wherever you may be! I'll be working on my seed order this week.

Presents of the Language of Flowers

I know it is a little late to be discussing Christmas gifts, but I was really spoiled by Santa last year. I am a book collector and one of my passions is books about the language of flowers. Santa took that hint and got carried away. Last Monday I went out to the mailbox and had to sign for a package from Argentina addressed to the Herbal Husband. Instead of it being for him, it was for me! Surprise! It was a very nice language of flowers book in Spanish. It has really nice bouquets of flowers on the inside pages. I'll have to learn more than the bad words in Spanish! I do know more. I know how to get to the bathroom! That's very important! More books tomorrow.

Baby, It's Still Cold Outside!

Well, last night was the coldest night in 15 years! It was minus 7! Fifteen years ago it was minus 22! When the Herbal Husband and I met 25 years ago, we were watching a PBS special on Railways of the World one evening. The program was talking about the railways of Peru. The one statement that stuck with me is that Peruvians enjoy eating! The Herbal Husband loves to eat and cook! Soooo we enjoyed the tropics indoors with a little Peruvian speciality for lunch. Shrimp cocktail, Peruvian style! Yummy! The avocados from Chile have been wonderful this year. So to spoil me a little bit more, the Herbal Husband mixed some thawed chopped shrimp (you can leave them whole if you wish) with some light mayo, salt and pepper, granulated garlic and some frozen peas and carrots, slightly cooked. He placed that on top of the avocado, but you can also chop up the avocado and place the entire salad on a plate (or back in the skin of the avocado) with a lettuce tomato garnish. Chopped scallions and parsley are sprinkled on top. Makes you think of summer on a very cold day in the 'Burgh!