Late Spring Harvest

        I've been doing quite a bit of work with herbs lately, both in my garden and along the creek bank. As I've been doing my work, I took my camera with me and snapped a few pictures of the plants and the processing. I think I have rosemary, thyme, peppermint, and catnip, but as I go through my pictures I may find more. 

        My rosemary has really been needing a haircut lately, so a few days ago I chopped a bunch of it off. I'm afraid it hardly put a dent in what needed to come off, but oh well. My dehydrator isn't big enough to do all that I need at once.

        I dried it and then crumbled it all up and put it in a mason jar. Don't ask me what I'm going to do with it all - I don't know. The other thing is, I need to take a lot more off as well. Maybe I'll go walking around town with a pushcart and a megaphone. Anyone want some rosemary?? Just kidding. 

        I put a picture of some thyme in a previous post, but I'll elaborate a little on what I was doing with it. If you remember, I was very sick when I got home from my ministry trip to Tijuana. I have found from prior experience that thyme tea with honey is one of the best things for a bad sore throat, next to ginger-sage tea. Well, I didn't have any sage at the moment, so I used thyme. I had about a gallon of this tea a day; I would brew a quart at a time and add a tablespoon of honey. Yum!

        Down on the creek bank, the peppermint is a few weeks away from blooming, and ready to harvest. When I let the goats out to graze I go looking for new stands to harvest from - it seems like they multiply exponentially every year. And no, I haven't yet figured out the constant for the equation {At=A0(e^kt}.

        More calendula (I am planning a whole post on what I do with this in a couple of weeks):

        I also have a bit of anise blue hyssop that I've been drying. I am planning on experimenting with different tea blends with that, peppermint, spearmint, catnip, and lemon balm. If you didn't already know, those are all mints as well. Most of the catnip I grow goes to this lazy animal below, but I do keep some of it for myself.

         Here is a picture of the overgrown mess that is my garden right now:

        My echinacea has its first bloom!

         As I said before, I have a couple of posts in the making on what I do with the things I grow in my garden (and forage from the creek bank). Keep an eye out for those in two weeks or so.

Blessings,

Reyna