Homegrown Herbal Tea

This year, knowing life would get hectic (but not as hectic as it got), I planned to start switching over to more herbs/perennials and less labor-intensive annual food crops. This past year was herbs in addition to other crops, this coming year most of the crops will be history, back to flowers and herbs. Trying to graduate, hopefully.

I planted lemon balm, bee balm, German chamomile, and anise hyssop for herb teas. The balms (and mint from the previous year) grew like crazy. The anise hyssop never came up, and the chamomile produced only a few flowers. So I have a cup of mint/lemon balm tea in front of me now.

What do you do? Very simple. Grow the plants. Cut off parts that grow where you don't want them to go. You can prune a mint unmercifully in this climate, and it will grow even more. Bring leaves inside and dry on a towel. The low humidity of hot, dry weather and air conditioning help the process. No dehydrator required. Put crispy leaves in a dark glass container to block deterioration from light. Store until winter.

Go for a walk in brisk winter air. Come in with your face tingling and your glasses foggy from the warm house. Warm a cup of water. Crumble about a teaspoon of leaves into a tea ball (metal ball with holes to allow essence of leaves to escape). Drop tea ball into water and let it steep until it smells good to you. It won't get dark like green or black tea, unless you add those leaves to it. Curl your cold hands around the cup and savor it. Mmm.

Second Christmas

This past MLK week-end we has Christmas with family who got trapped in another city by snow during the actual Christmastime. We are having a lot of cold, wet weather. The Southeastern US was supposed to have a warm, dry winter due to the influence of La Nina. I guess that forecast was a little off.

My nephew and niece are darling children. 4 and 6 years of age. I see them once a year, and am amazed to see the similarities between them as a set and my brother and I growing up. The boy is my brother's clone. Mom played an old cassette tape from 1979 (my brother was 4), and we discovered that his son even has the same laugh he did as a child! The daughter does not favor me in the face, but she has my tall, thin frame. Beautiful child.

Snow again today, and a chance Sunday night. Winter in Memphis is usually much milder than this. Fun! Hot chocolate calleth.

New Year's First Snow Day

We had our first snow day of the year today, which meant the obligatory sleeping in (I can drive on snow, but there are too many idiots in Escalades on cell phones going full speed down treacherous streets for me to venture out), walking in a winter wonderland, taking pictures of Beautiful Winter Scenes, and getting hot drinks at the local cafe. I shoveled the driveway so that the slush would not refreeze. Must work tomorrow.

Spending some time researching vegetarian recipes. Have spent a lot of time this year learning about being vegetarian (basing diet on vegetables). Good stuff.

Getting Ready to Run

My experiments at work are starting to produce data again, after a long, long dry spell. That is good, but it means long hours at work while I stare out at sunny days wishing I could be elbow-deep in dirt and baby plants rather than at work, all clean. I started these peas a week ago. Sunny days lead to remarkably fast growth for these guys! I have to try to get them conditioned and out soon. I'm starting more sugar snaps tonight, and the 4 or 5 varieties of tomatoes I'm putting in this year. The chard, spinach, radishes, carrots, and beets can go out whenever I get time. The buttercups are about to bloom, so I'm waiting for the last snowstorm/severe cold snap to pass, as it always comes when they are blooming. We'll see.

Dig! Dig! Dig!

I finished clearing the front bed Saturday. It is ready for fertilizer and liming ASAP. Since we are having a real winter this year (lows in the 20s forecast again next week, after a warm weekend), the baby plants will stay indoors for a bit longer. The broccoli and bok choi have moved to the porch, and the peas are going in tubes tonight on a radiator cover for faster germination, then to the windows, then the porch, then hardening, then outside. I also cleared some of the back beds of the rake-able leaves, hoping the cold night-time temps will foil my nemeses, the slugs. A broccoli plant that survived the winter is heading now. Wow! Maybe we'll get something out of those plants after all!

Digging Up Roots With Snow on the Ground

Next week-end starts the beginning of the cool-weather planting season here in Memphis, if the weather cooperates, as next week-end will be one month before the average last frost date. This is my last week-end before the indoor and outdoor planting begins in earnest, with the sunporch turning into a greenhouse and the flats starting to appear outdoors on sunny days for cold-hardening. So I'm digging, and the longer cool snap than usual we had last week means that there is STILL snow in the shade on the bushes and the ground. Wow. Soon I'll be planting outdoors, and losing the winter flab! Woohoo! Ow.

Snow!

This is a photo from last week. I have lettuce plants from last fall that have survived some pretty severe temperature extremes, and being frozen solid, with no protection. Amazing. Today I woke up to a total surprise: snow on the ground! It was a wet, snow-ballable snow, too. Work is closed, so I get the day at home. Woohoo! Play and shovel time this morning, followed by Internet time and oatmeal bars and things I did not finish over the week-end. Shovel dirt in a garden bed one day, shovel snow the next! I love Tennessee.

A Sound of Rushing Waters

This is a picture of a dogwood bud, taken yesterday before the thaw started. Today was the first day of melting after the freezing rain/sleet/snow mix Friday. We got about half an inch of ice with less on the tree branches, enough to look pretty without breaking the trees. Things melted off nicely, and I'm starting broccoli and lettuce (and some cookies) this afternoon. Great day, blue skies, water and ice everywhere, and ice bits raining down under every mature tree.

One Bush at A Time

An altered version of a Dottie Rambo song from my childhood ("One day at a time, sweet Jesus, that's all I'm asking from you...") was sneaking through my thoughts as I started digging the front bed in earnest today, trying to beat out the rain. The bushes and grasses in the front bed have much healthier (larger, deeper, harder to dig) root structures than the ones in the back beds did. It will take me a long time to get this bed dug properly, but just getting the roots out will plow it up pretty well. And don't get me started on decorative grasses. I hope the numerous root nodules I saw on overgrown, exuberantly healthy looking plants ( the roots were packed several inches deep) indicate a healthy soil bacterial population. You know it is going to be a long dig when you raise the pick above your head, swing down with all your might, and THE PICK BOUNCES. This is not rocky soil. It is full of roots. No pictures of the work out front this year, but I'll talk about it. Must rest a bit and continue the indoor work now that the rain has started.

Winter is Here!

We had our first dusting of snow this week. We were hoping for more, but it did not happen. It is also unusually cold! We've been below freezing, even for HIGHS, for a few days now, though we're supposed to warm up next week. The cat's water freezes inside the garage. The 3-gallon bucket outside is frozen solid. No gardening here, though the lettuces and broccoli ARE NOT DEAD! Unbelievable!

I've been reading a lot, collecting herbal tea recipes, and working on the spring planting schedule. The broccoli seeds go in for germination week-end after next. Hope we get a break in the weather to clear beds soon.

All I Want for Christmas

Is what I received. I opened a huge box to see something that's been on my Deeply Wanted but Top Secret list for many years- a violin. It is a rented student violin, but if all goes well we'll upgrade. I always wanted to play a stringed instrument, mostly because I had ancestors and relatives on both sides of the family who were/are musically talented. If you come from the Nashville area, it comes with the territory. Before the days of radio, from mansions with grand pianos or organs to shacks with home-made banjos, everybody had a family member who played some musical instrument. Singing was a common way to spend an evening or make the workload lighter. Music was in our blood, from the Scotch-Irish ballads to bluegrass to Negro spirituals and hymns. I have wanted this for a long, long time. I'm figuring out the notes for the octaves the instrument covers now. What fun!

Staying Alive

They're still out there! We're still getting tomatoes, too, from the shelves indoors. Life is good.

Still amazed by the lack of response to the whole "Climate-gate" thing in official circles. It is as if the political ball is already rolling too hard to stop for the mere TRUTH- the researchers fudged the data to get and keep funding, and will continue to do so. A co-worker convinced of global warming responded to my comment that the globe has been cooling in the past 10 years, and it is hard to convince people of global warming when they are freezing in this manner:

"The uneducated will believe what they see. You have to be educated to see the truth of global warming." Yup. Cold is really hot, you can warm your home without a fire and drive your car on magic electricity, and there really is no absolute truth after all (umm, how could we have bank accounts, court cases, speeding tickets, or any science requiring measurements or calculation without absolute truth? Just wondering...). Hope I never get THAT educated.

Winter Gardening

I planted several cool-weather vegetables out back in mid-September. I wanted to get them out in August, but weather and time did not coincide to let that happen. Las week we had 2 nights in the low 20s. The chard looks gone. The tomatoes and limas are long gone.

But I have been pleasantly surprised by the lettuces and broccoli. I saw the frost on their leaves. I saw them looking frozen solid. And look! They live! No protection! I may or may not get any more than the 127 pounds I harvested this year, but it is interesting to watch and experiment.

The Thursday Question

The weather here in Memphis stayed in the mid-to-upper 30s with rain, Thank God. We'll uncover everything tomorrow, when temps are definitely going up again into the 40s. I hope the orchards and farms to the north are OK, too.

Since we've been married, I've done the grocery shopping on Friday night on the way home from work or on Saturday morning early, when the farmer's market is open. So Thursday is the Compile a Menu night- examine the weekly ads, examine the pantry, Ask the Question (Do you want anything specific to eat next week?), and make the list. Sometimes I am inspired by an online recipe or a book from the library to make a particular dish. At other times I use dishes we both like (minestrone, vegetarian chili, roast chicken and vegetables followed by Other Chicken Dishes, oven-baked cereal-encrusted catfish, etc.) and pull from the "standards".  It is our routine, and it works to keep things simple and predictable.

Winter Strikes Back

We have a 100% chance of wintry mix tomorrow, 70% chance freezing rain tonight. I had another long day at work, so Husband kindly covered all my baby plants with buckets and tarps, and put the top on my rudimentary cold frame. The temperature is due to hover around freezing for about 36 hours. Hope those little guys can take the dark for that long. 

It is currently 43 degrees F out there- could one hope for it to stay that warm with winds from the Northeast? Dare we hope for local tree fruit this year? I pray for the trees tonight. Let's all pray hard.

I Like My Muck Boots

Picture this. You're picking up your child from a suburban, overcrowded middle school for an orthodontics appointment. A torrential rain starts falling. At class change time, a strange, hooded figure in a school-bus yellow, tarpaulin-like poncho and the pictured boots comes to the side door with a group of students, carrying 2 5-gallon buckets with a few spare umbrellas for the next class.

That was me. Yes, they laughed, but my feet were dry! I bought these boots at the Mart years ago when I taught in a portable classroom (i.e. a room on cinderblocks), across a driveway from the main building. That driveway turned into a small creek when it rained. I needed foot protection. These boots also serve well in snowy conditions, because they fit over my shoes and have better traction than my shoes do. Cheap, but functional. I like them, even though they make my already large feet look immense. I have a firm foundation.

Different People See Different Things

 As we were walking around yesterday, enjoying the weather and taking pictures, my husband looked at our roof- no melting yet. The neighbor's roof had water pouring down and a lot of the snow gone. "See," he said, "we have better attic insulation than they do. Their second story is right up next to the roof. They are heating the roof to melt the snow." I never would have thought of that reason for snow melt on their light gray roof and none on our black one. That's why it is good to be married to someone with an engineering mindset- he can sometimes see things in a tremendously different and delightful way that explains so many things for me. And now I know another sign to observe good attic insulation.

A Tennessee Blizzard, The Day After

Here are some shots from this morning, after the storm passed. The snow has melted from most of the roads, some of the sidewalks, and the south-facing yards today. It was a glorious morning to don our boots and enjoy the sights in the neighborhood. It was not safe to drive early, but by evening you could go out reasonably safely. This was a pretty deep snow for us. 

It's a Tennessee Blizzard, Y'all!

Northerners may chortle loudly, but today we had the Tennessee equivalent of a blizzard. I came home from work at 2 PM after setting up some cells for next week, just in time to see the rain starting to bounce off my car. It wasn't liquid falling anymore. 30 minutes later, my Nebraskan husband was strangely invigorated, bouncing from window to window, watching the snow fall in huge, wet flakes. A few inches accumulated in just a few hours. We walked to the local cafe, snapping pictures along the wandering way, for two large hot cocoas. How better could we spend a snowy afternoon? Enjoy the pictures.

The Barren Trees Are Alive With Birds

A few of the trees are starting to wake up due to last week's warm spell, but most are still leafless. The flock of robins on which I commented a few days ago has not vanished to Parts North quite yet- they're just stripping berries in a different part of the neighborhood. I was amazed to go outside and hear the birds this morning- spring is coming, even if the weather is cold. The birds are singing louder and longer, and getting bolder as well, sitting in trees or on wires to watch me put out birdseed. I talked to a mockingbird this afternoon. It was alerting me to the presence of Spot, and I told him/her that Spot was duly noted. I like how mockingbirds seem to curse at cats. When young are fledging, the adults will actively attack (they dive bomb for the eyes, from above and behind) any cat that comes out from under a roof. Most cats just find a sheltered area and wait it out. This is my wild kingdom at work.