The Herb Garden

10/03/2024

The garden is hot, dry and dusty on this March day. Don’t forget to get some of those genteel satisfying little tasks done - they can make an ordinary day wonderful.
1 & 2: Ratatouille and Pasta Sauces under way. Eat, freeze or preserve.
3. Keep your eye on the windfall fruits
4, 5 & 6: Seed saving
7 & 8: Petals for Pot Pourri
9: Drying herbs for winter posies
ENJOY!

16/01/2024

What a fragrant relaxing afternoon I’m having. Lovely lavender. I’d better get on, as I’m beginning to feel deliciously drowsy 🐝💜

30/12/2023

The Queen Mother is in residence! The sweetpea was the Queen Mother’s favourite flower, and this fragrant frilly is named in her honour.
This gorgeous bunch was brought to me by a friend, thus confirming its historical association with friendship. In literature and art, the sweetpea expresses sentiments of appreciation, gratitude and blissful pleasure. Used in traditional medicine the sweetpea is believed to have anti-inflammatory benefits.
The flowers are edible as are the young shoots - but do not eat the seeds, ever! They are toxic!
An abundance of flowers, and let’s face it, sweetpeas are abundant, can be used to make a syrup for a unique spritzer or cocktail. Now that sounds like blissful pleasure.

10/11/2023

Elderflower Cordial in the making - lemons and flowers from the back garden. Smells delicious.

06/11/2023

How I imagine I look in my garden…

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jessie Willcox Smith - A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1905.

17/10/2023

Some to eat now, and some for later. And this is just a little of what our urban garden gives us !

07/10/2023

The first potpourri of spring. Daffodils, striped tulips, hellebores, grape hyacinths, tiny cyclamen, and anything else that can be dried from the spring garden. Gentle colours, no added fragrance.

08/08/2023

When it’s dark and cold, it’s the time to enjoy the aroma of spice and warm oranges, light and darkness - and be grateful in the knowing that spring will follow. Every season brings its joy.