Angelica Rising and Dust Too!

A Hedge of Angelica!

I just love big herbs that take up space and look good at the same time!  Angelica is one of my favorites in that category.  And this year they are going to be spectacular, herbally speaking!  They have stood up very well to the colder nights we have been having.  I keep saying this but I think we have turned the corner and I don't think we are going to have another frost night until the fall.  Fingers crossed!

One of my early posts when I started to blog was called The Year of Angelica.  Click on the link and find a recipe for crystallized angelica from one of my favorite herbal authors, Bertha Reppert.  Here is an additional link in 2010 talking about the sweet smell of the Angelica blossoms called The Sweet Smell of Angelica!   I also talked about purple angelica or Korean angelica (Angelica gigas) and here is a link to that post called Purple Angelica again from early in my blogging life.  You can find it in the Well Sweep Herb Farm catalog.  I am definitely going to get another one or two.  They are really a very pretty plant.  Is there a particular big herb in your herb garden that you look forward to seeing every spring?  Please tell me about it. 

Still moving boxes and dust around!  By the end of next week, we will be done with the windows project.  Just exhausted by the whole thing!  The Herbal Husband keeps saying we have enough boxed up, we could just move!  He loves to kid around, but this has made us think about lessening the extra clutter.  We will see how that moves forward.  We are expecting rain later.  Hope you are having a great day.  Back to moving that dust.  Oh before I go, Linda G. has asked that I write a post on growing peppercorns and since capsicum is the 2016 herb of the year, I guess I need to start talking about it!
 

A Sage Plant with a Purpose!

Just Love My Sages!

You may not be able to see it, but this sage plant came from the dead!  It is almost like a branch got layered in the ground and came back to life!  I was thinking that I had lost two beautiful multiyear sage plants last season.  I did lose one, but this one wanted to live!  I do love my sages and I would be Sage Lady if the name hadn't been taken.  We had a cold night last night, but everything looks like it survived.  Going to spend the day in the garden doing more cleanup.  It is going to be a sunny and warm day here.  Let me know what's going on your herb garden.  Talk to you again soon.

Starting Again with Hope, Herbally Speaking!

Each year I go out in the herb garden with hope.  The 'Burgh had a very mild winter and the herbs I had hoped would come back have not.  There have been some exceptions.

We have been working hard indoors to get things put away from the first windows install.  Round two is in early May.  So we gave ourselves a treat and did a bit of cleanup in the herb garden.  I am hopeful that some of the annuals like the calendulas and summer savory have reseeded.  No signs yet, but there's hope.  The horehound is looking beautiful and the agastache is coming back which I seem to kill every season.  So hopefully there will be more hope to come.  It has been a beautiful day in the 'Burgh!  Hope you are having a great day!  Talk to you soon!

An Empty Space to Add Herbs and Flowers!

Four Rosemarys and Zero . . .!

Zero for lemon verbenas.  We had such a mild winter and I still lost plants, but ones that were inside.  We (or The Herbal Husband) get carried away with potting tender herbs up and bringing them in.  This year was a bit different.  We both paid less attention to what was growing or not growing inside.  We lost the savory varieties I was going to talk about.  We lost several scented geraniums.  Some did survive.  And again I killed a lemon verbena in my garden and the one we brought inside croaked too!

In better herbal news, we got four (Yes, you read that correctly.) rosemarys through the winter.  I have always heard that a dry rosemary is a dead one.  So to get four through in great shape is an herbal miracle!  So the varieties are two creeping (can't be more specific), two upright varieties, one called 'Spice Islands' and one called 'Golden Rain' that has a gold variegation.  You can definitely find the creeping variety of rosemary here in the 'Burgh and maybe 'Spice Islands'.  'Golden Rain' was developed by Thomas DeBaggio and I got mine last year on the way to the national herb society meeting at DeBaggio's Herb Farm & Nursery in Chantilly, VA.  Just got their latest catalog in the mail and it is a very good resource for how to grow rosemary.  They don't do mail order, but you can subscribe to their catalog.  It is a good one.

We are supposed to get rain today after eight days of none.  We have been moving plants around in the garden and maybe I will talk about that next time.  Still trying to get the inside of the house moved around!  Hope you are having a great day.  Talk to you later!

We Never Have This Much Luck!

28 Brown Figs and Counting!

Well here I am again!  I'm just going to blog when I can.  We did get the first installment of Windows a week ago and have been totally exhausted trying to clean (historic dust) and reassemble rooms.  We use pictures like wallpaper so we just finished putting those pics back on walls that had windows installed

So The Herbal Husband asked if I was still blogging!  No because we had the chaos of the windows.  So The Herbal Husband is excited to show you the figs!  This is the kind of fig I enjoy the most!  Hope you are having a wonderful day!  Please let me know what is going on in your herb garden.  Talk to you later.

My Favorite Fig!  So Many to Choose From!

A Bit More Time Please!

Can't believe it is April already!  My buddy Elizabeth had to remind me about blogging!  I thought that April 1 would be a good target date.  So much for that idea.  We are getting new windows for the house in two installments because we have so much stuff (I use that term loosely!) starting next week.  Oh and the TV died last night.  Did you know they don't fix TVs much anymore?  Fortunately we can recycle our old TV.  A very good thing!  Well, I am asking you to be patient with me.  Hope to be blogging again soon!

Some Sunflowers to X-Stitch!