Plodding Along The Herbal Path and a Road Trip or Two!

The Herb Garden Still Has A Lot of Green and Gray!

Always Love My Annual Visit to Well Sweep Herb Farm's Christmas Shop!

One of the Beautiful Perennial Beds That Still Had Some Color!

My Afternoon Tea at Sally Lunn's in Chester, New Jersey!

Sharing Tiramisu with The Herbal Husband!

Red Anniversary Roses from Our Friends in Uruguay!

We have arrived in November already!  I can't seem to get on my laptop enough these days to blog!  So here is a recap of the last weekend.  We almost always go to Allentown this time of year.  It is not always on our wedding anniversary, but this year it was.  The Herbal Husband has a toy show that he likes to attend and I almost always go to Well Sweep Herb Farm in Port Murray, New Jersey for the start of their Christmas shop and the Sally Lunn's Tearoom & Restaurant in Chester, New Jersey for afternoon tea even if it is sometimes in the morning when I arrive.  It is a lot of driving for me because remember I drive for your safety and mine!

Can I just say that besides the huge (more than 1,900 varieties) selection of herbs, perennials and exotics, Well Sweep Herb Farm is visually a feast for the senses.  The Hyde family who has owned the farm for 46 years and the quality is consistently excellent from year to year.  If you live in the vicinity, I hope you will support this herb farm with your business.   Their Christmas shop is stuffed full of all kinds of herb related gifts, dried flowers, books, potpourri items, and lovely Christmas and herb related gifts.   Fortunately for us that live further away, they still do mail order.  I have started to order each year just so I have some unusual herbs for my herb garden.  They do have a paper catalog still and you can download their catalog if you would like from their website.  One of my favorite herb farms in the east.  Here is a link to a post I did for Mother Earth Living called Herbal Travels:  Well-Sweep Herb Farm.  So nice to see that they are continuing to prosper.

I continued on down the road to Chester, New Jersey and stopped by one of my favorite tearooms, Sally Lunn's.  It has been in business 30 plus years and is still consistently very good.  It was very busy on Saturday and I sat for a time next to two ladies who had never had afternoon tea and needed to learn the proper way to steep loose leaf tea.  I came to the rescue.  My afternoon tea was delicious as usual and I took a scone, clotted cream and jam back for The Herbal Husband's afternoon tea at the hotel.  Didn't quite have the same atmosphere, but clotted cream is his middle name!

Then we made a reservation at one of our new favorite restaurants in Allentown.  It is called Henry's Salt of the Sea.  It is very cozy with a long bar and booths in the front.  They are known for their French inspired seafood.  I had sea scallops and The Herbal Husband had schnitzel.  We were both happy and we had a weekend of mostly good food and not counting calories.  The Herbal Husband showered me with wonderful gifts and cards.  He told me I got him a toy ship from Italy and I got him a LSU purple fig for his collection at Well Sweep.  We came home to a box sitting on our doorstep full of roses from our friends in Uruguay.  We were afraid they would freeze in the cold, but actually it was like them being in the refrigerator overnight.  It worked quite well.

As far as the herb garden goes, there are still many herbs that have remained green even with the cold temperatures.  I still have a part of the golden pineapple sage that is still alive and blooming, a shoot of a calendula may keep blooming for Thanksgiving (Maybe wishful thinking!) and the tarragon has come back nicely.  As always the chives are nice and green and so is the salad burnet.  All of the herbs we transplanted earlier are doing well.  I was afraid we were too late with our transplants, but they have worked out.  Would like to make a few Christmas presents, herbally speaking.  Here is a link to my post last year giving you links to an artemisia tree and spice wreaths.

Well, I hope you are getting things done more smoothly than I am.  My big project that I am trying to get done is my talk on Shakespeare's Herbs and Flowers for next March.  So please forgive me if I am not around too much.  I will try to post when I can.  We had a rainy day in the herb garden, but still milder than usual.  Talk to you later.