A Rainy June, Herbally Speaking!

My Purchases from Beech Creek Botanical Garden & Nature Preserve!

Basil in a Container Until the Temperatures Heat Up!

Beneficial Insect Found the Calendula Flower Right Away!

And So Too the Rue Flowers!

The Lemon Balm Scented Geranium is Flowering!

I Know I Have Written About This Rose!  Can't Remember the Name!

The Yarrow is Blooming As Well!

My herbal companion, Bonnie and I had a splendid day at Beech Creek Botanical Garden & Nature Preserve in Alliance, Ohio.  We were pleasantly surprised by the school buses with children learning about nature and gardening.  They don't have nearly the selection of herbs that they did at their previous location, Lily of the Valley Herb Farm.  The quality of their plants is very good.

Well, well, well, June is busting out all over here in the 'Burgh!  We have had so much rain over the past few weeks.  Almost every day The Herbal Husband reports that we have received an inch of rain!  My weeds are letting me know how good it is for them.  I have voluminous amounts of weeds in the bad bag and still it keeps raining.

As you can see from the sampling of herbs and flowers in the photos, the rain has helped in great measure to liven up the landscape.  The mild winter helped as well.  I had verbena bonariensis come back from the plant itself.  I think they generally self sow here.  I have also lost some plants that I thought would come through.  The French tarragon had two very tiny stalks.  They didn't last.  Although my Texas tarragon that was in a container in the basement all winter is flourishing!   I thought a chocolate flower that never is hardy here, was going to make it through.  Sadly it died.  I also wanted to mention that we put the sweet basils I purchased into a container because we have not been consistently in the 80's in the daytime and the 60's at night.  Basils do not enjoy cold soils!  May was a beautiful month for gardens here and June is on pace to be equally as nice.

Hope you are having a great day in your herb garden and you will stop by from time to time to check out what is going on in my herb garden.  I have started the process of cutting my chive blossoms.  Make some chive blossom vinegar if you have some that haven't gone past!  Just go out and enjoy the beauty of your herb garden every chance you get.  You will get pleasure from growing fresh herbs!  Talk to you soon!

Will Try This Again, Herbally Speaking!

Lovage is Popping Its Leaves Up!

Don't Forget to Leave The Dandelion Flowers for the Bees!

Angelica is Quite Perky on a Sunny Day!

Square Eleven Done!  One More to Go!

Seems like a while since I have been by.  The weather has continued to be up and down.  We finally have daffodils blooming.  Some of the bushes and trees that had started to leaf out will have to start again.  We covered a lot of plants with ornamental grass clippings.  Will probably have to pull more grasses than normal this year because of seeds growing.  We have gotten out in the front garden and clip things down and took out a redbud that had died.  It was right by the walk and I don't want anything to happen to the mailman or delivery people!  We had one car stop while we were working and tell us how much she loved our garden!  That really means a lot!  Thanks to her!

So the lovage is up in the main herb garden.  We had planted one in the back gardens and I don't see signs of it.  The angelica is up and looking very happy.  Hope the building of the new arbor doesn't hurt their leaves!  We looked for signs that the lemon verbena has come back that we left in the ground.  No signs of life yet.  And please, please don't take out all of your dandelions.  Leave some flowers for the bees.  It is one of the first flowers of the season for them.

Been very intently trying to finish this cross-stitch throw.  Coral bells is square eleven as you can see in the photo.  I am working on the twelfth and final square.  Hoping to get it done by Friday.  We shall see.  There is still a chill in the air here.  So we will move with baby steps to get covers off.  Hope you are having a fabulous day wherever you may be.  Still have so much to say and hopefully will get back on track soon!  Talk to you later!

Been Busy in the Herb Garden and Celebrating the 2016 Herb of the Year with a Jelly Recipe!

Rosemary Sherry Jelly Was One of 19 Batches of Herbal Jelly Made!

Last Pouches of Certo Used for Hot Pepper Jelly!

Keep Finding the Ladies!  This Time on Mint!

Mexican Sage--A Late Tall Bloomer in the Garden!

One Last Monarch on the Butterfly Bush!

One Last Gasp for Our Grape Arbor!

My Favorite Flowered!

This certainly has been a different year for me in the herb garden.  I have probably had years like this before.  As I get older my May trips to England affect the herb garden and the stresses have been weather related as well.  All of the photos above are from October.  I had a brain freeze about my jelly choices and fortunately I have a couple of the Western Reserve Unit of the Herb Society of America's cookbooks which saved me for flavors.  Thanks to all of those wonderful herb ladies for their inspiration  The hot pepper jelly recipe is from The Herbal Pantry by Emelie Tolley and Chris Mead.  As you can see in the photo, the peppers are suspended in the jelly which makes for a great presentation.  Here is their recipe with my notations in parentheses.

Hot Pepper Jelly
Makes 6-1/2 8 oz. jars (The half I will use for us.)
Recipe says it makes 8 8 oz. jars.  For me, it did not.

"An appealing combination of sweet and hot, this jelly is extremely good with chicken or lamb, or with cream cheese as an hors d'oeuvre.  Also you can use this as a glaze for ribs during the last 15 minutes of grilling or baking in the oven."

1 cup minced green bell pepper
1/2 cup minced hot red pepper, or to taste
1-1/2 cups cider vinegar
6-1/2 cups sugar
6 ounces (2 pouches) liquid pectin

Combine the peppers, vinegar, and sugar in a non-aluminum saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat.  Reduce the heat and boil gently for 5 to 7 minutes.  Remove from heat.  (Quickly stir in the pectin and return to heat and boil exactly one minute).  Remove from heat and (Stir for a couple of minutes at least.  I stirred for 5 minutes.  Probably too much time because the Certo really started to go gloppy.  I think when you see the pepper pieces suspended you will know it is enough.)  Put carefully (because it is already just about set up) into sterilized jars that have been boiled previously for 10 minutes and use two piece rings and lids to cover.  Place the lids in hot water until ready to use.  You don't have to boil the rings.  Place all jars into a boiling water bath for 5 minutes.  As long as you hear that ping after the jars come out and the lids have sealed down, they are canned.  If the lid has not sealed, place them in the refrigerator and use them promptly.

"Note:  If the only hot peppers available are green, use a red rather than a green bell pepper."

In herb garden news, I did lose some herbs from the heat and dry weather.  We did have some winners from the annuals planted especially the Mexican sage which is blooming its head off at the moment.  Love those tall late blooming herbs!  And the beneficials are still around and you can participate just like me at Lost Ladybug Project, a project of Cornell University to find those lost ladybugs.  We also actually had a monarch last week as well.  Sadly not too many of them these days.  The grape arbor is finally going to be replaced.  Need the help of our neighbor, but hopefully that will happen in the next couple of weeks!  Maybe a Halloween treat!  And then finally our crowning achievement is that the lemon verbena both in the container and in the ground thrived so much so that they both bloomed.  Very excited!

Well, those are some of the high points of the herb garden this season.  Did cut my chives and chop them for my container in the freezer.  Did make a touch more purple basil vinegar.  Do have a small bush of mint marigold or Texas tarragon to harvest before the cold sets in.  Oh and some of the parsley will be cut and frozen for Parsley Dill soup.  And finally will clip back the lemon verbena in the ground and I am going to experiment with covering it with a fiberglass cover make for roses.  Maybe it will help bring it back.  It really like the space we put it in.

The herbal containers will be coming in the next two weeks.  Have also started several projects of cross-stitch, so I will post about the garden when I can.  The months are flying by with such speed and I don't seem to want to write as much as I used to.  A beautiful day in the herb garden and I'm inside posting here.  Hope you are doing well wherever you may be.  Talk to you later.  

The Lost Ladybug Project Submissions Update!

Just wanted to update the submissions I sent to the Lost Ladybug Project.  The information will not be posted on my page because the database doesn't include Europe and ladybugs eggs can not be identified for certain.  So here are the results. The yellow one is a Propylea quatuordecimpunctata and the other is Harmonia axyridis which is quite common to find worldwide.  I have one more photo to submit.  I will add it to this post tomorrow.  We have the ickies and stickies back again, but it is July!  Hope you had a great day!  We'll talk again tomorrow.

Maybe Too Blurry for Submission!  It is A Harmonia axyridis!

More Submissions for the Lost Ladybug Project!

As I have told you in the past, I am a contributor to the Lost Ladybug Project spearheaded by Cornell University.  Here is a link to my page of photos of ladybugs I have submitted over the years.  The native ladybugs are disappearing.  They were once common and now they are rare.  The Lost Ladybug Project's mission is trying to track whatever species you can find and plot out where they are and to try and keep the native ladybug from coming even more rare than it already is.

I was excited on my latest trip to England that I found two different ladybugs than we see here in the Pittsburgh area.  I have submitted my findings to the LLP and hopefully next week or so, I will have some results.  The first was found in the kitchen garden of Hampton Court Palace, Surrey, England on some lemon balm.  The second photo was taken at Fenton House, Hampstead, London, England on some mugwort.  The third photo was taken this morning in our garden in the raspberry patch while The Herbal Husband was watering.  He spotted the ladybug laying eggs on the underside of the leaf.  Of course, I was out doing errands and he didn't have his camera on him and no, he doesn't have a smartphone!  So when I came back he told me what happened and I went back and got a good shot of the eggs.  Need to remember to ask him spots or no spots on the ladybug.

The Hampton Court Palace Ladybug--Propylea quatuordecimpunctata

The Fenton House Ladybug--Harmonia axyridis

The Local Ladybug Eggs

So please stay tuned and I hope to have an update shortly for you.  It is a beautiful sunny day here in the 'Burgh with low humidity.  Hope you have had a fabulous day.  More tomorrow!

The Lost Ladybug Project!

Harmonia axyridis on Green Pepper Basil

So I have mentioned a while back that I am a contributor to the Lost Ladybug Project which is a ongoing research project of Cornell University, an extension university and one of the best IMO.  They are trying to discover why the native ladybugs that were once common are now so rare.  It all started for me when I wanted to get rid of (move) a patch of tansy in the herb garden and the tansy was attracting all stages of ladybugs.  I wrote about it for Mother Earth Living and my post was called Tansy, Russian Sage and and Ladybugs, Oh My!  Here is a link to my contributor page on the Lost Ladybug Project website.  So if you find a ladybug or a bunch of them, take photos and upload them to the site for identification.  We need to help map where the ladybugs are and help keep the populations up of the natives ones!

The weather has started to turn to winter and we are very gray here.  Sixth straight day without sun, but that is how it is in the 'Burgh!  Can't believe we have come down to the last day of the year!  One more post in the month!  Bet you know what it is going to be!  Hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you may be.  I'll talk to you tomorrow!

A Year in Review 2014, Herbally Speaking!

January 2014!  What a Winter!

Got a Lot of Tea Blends Made!

Sweet Basil Doing Well on a Cold Windowsill

Chives Popping Up Late February!

My Favorite, Lemon Verbena Needs a Trim-Late March!

Found My Theme for 2014-Lemon and Some Lime!

Mature Lavenders Didn't Fare So Well!

Scented Geranium and Lemon Verbenas Are Doing Well!

Always Excited Buying Herbs for the Garden!

Got Some Interesting Lemon Herbs from Well-Sweep and Carolee

The Herb Garden in Late May

The Only Low Was Downy Mildew on the Sweet Basil!

Healthy Seedlings One Minute And

Diseased and Dying the Next!

A Bright Spot Despite the Stink Bugs Was the Raspberry Crop!  A Record!

Still Picking Raspberries-November 4

Lots of Beneficials Including Some Preying Mantids-July

Preying Mantis in October

My Favorite Edible Rose-Rosa Rugosa 'Alba'

'Brother Cadfael' Rose

Swallowtail Tail Butterfly on Sunflower

Finches on Sunflower

Not Much Lavender in Bloom This Year!

One of My Favorites in July-Bee Balm

Borage for the Bees

Calendula--An Herbal Workhorse in the Herb Garden

Pineapple Sage in Full Bloom in November!

Always Have to Have Nasturtiums-a Peruvian Connection!

First of Two Hundred Plus Figs in Two Containers!

My Favorite Attracting Beneficials

Here Are Cocoons of Parasitic Wasps on Lemon Verbena!

Sweet Annie Wreath Celebrating the Herb of the Year 2014-Artemisia!

Making Cinnamon Basil Jelly

Tomato Sauce Ready to be Canned!

Indoor Herbs Getting a Sunbathe Before Going Inside for Winter!

Already Thinking About Next Year's Garden!

Except for the Cold Temperature, It Doesn't Seem Like Winter!

Decided to do one more post before the year comes to an end.  For the most part 2014 was a great year.  The winter was very cold and snowy, but herbs survived that I never thought would and others that had made it for years, were gone.  

Figs and raspberries were the champions this year.  We had over 200 figs in two container plants and I made 144 jars of raspberry jam.  Both records.  You can see my favorite herbal flowers in bloom.  

The one tragedy is that the sweet basil in the garden got downy mildew.  As you can see inside, sweet basil survives and does well.  Soo we may have to grow sweet basil indoors until they can find a true sweet basil that is resistant to downy mildew outside in the garden.

Beneficial insects continue to be a joy.  Now if we can breed enough preying mantids to control the stink bug population, we will have succeeded.  Stink bugs were significantly worse on the fruit then herbs.  I continue to have four-lined plant bug issues.  I will talk about the lemon and lime themed herb garden in 2015.  I think it was a success.  We have several of the plants indoors.  I will try to talk about each of them in depth in the coming weeks.

As you can see in the last photo, we are snowless.  I think less than .2 of an inch of snow for the month.  Very unusual!  It has been cold off and on, but we are very cold today.  Hope you are enjoying new year's celebrations wherever you may be.  I'm blessed to still be blogging and writing for you my readers!  The happiest and healthiest of New Year's 2015 to you all.  I will continue to be here whenever you have an herbal issue.  The joy and magic of herbs will continue to fuel me for my lifetime and I hope to be sharing my joy with you!  Talk to you next year!