Perfect Beautiful Dried Flowers

Today I went to the school where four of my grandsons go because Hunter and Tanner had their award ceremony.  They're in fourth grade this year and Tanner got an award for A-B honor roll and Hunter got an award for perfect attendance.  They were so cute up on the stage.  I took pictures and waved at them a lot.  Tomorrow night I have to go back to the school because Kyle, my oldest grandson, is having his eighth grade graduation.  I have to take pictures of him too, so I hope I don't forget my camera.

I've tried several different ways to dry flowers and herbs and each method would take too long and the end product would usually be brown and ugly.  I've tried drying herbs on screen frames, laying them on plates and putting them in a dark dry place, in the sun, on the dryer, and I've even tried drying them in the microwave or oven, but I never liked the results from any of these methods.  I heard one time about a drying method that has worked so well for me that it's the only way I've dried ANYTHING for several years.

Paper bags of flowers and herbs drying on my dash.

I cut the flowers or leaves of what I want to dry.  Then I put each item in its own brown paper bag, fold down the top and put a clothes pin on it to hold the bag closed.  Then I take the bag(s) out to my car and put them on the back dash, leaving all of the windows rolled up, and I have perfectly dried specimens in only one or two days, depending on how hot it is.  If I have too many bags to dry at once, if it's hot enough in my car, I'll lay some of the bags on the backseat.  I suppose it would be handy to have an old car sitting in the yard to dry my little bags of flowers/herbs in.  Using this method, the flowers retain their beautiful color and the herb leaves remain green.

Flowers dried in car in a paper bag:
Calendula, Lavender, Chamomile and Rose Petals

I just took this picture of flowers dried in brown paper bags on the dash of my car.  Aren't they beautiful?  On the back row is Calendula and Lavender, and on the front row is Chamomile and Rose Petals.  I hope if you haven't tried this method of drying yet, that you will give it a try.  It's very rewarding when you want a cup of tea and the herbs and flowers you have to choose from look like this instead of being brown and colorless.  Happy drying.

Herbal Supply Closet Overhaul # 2

I really enjoy  having an herbal supply closet, but I just don't have enough room.  Several days ago I tried to rearrange everything to make it look more orderly so I could find what I wanted easier, but it turned out looking just the same as it did before I began.  I've thought about that closet for days and realized I needed more shelves.  Half of the closet had all of our Christmas stuff stacked in it and half of the closet had a stand with four shelves, and that's where my herbal supplies goes. 

Herbal Supply Closet

I spent hours yesterday and emptied my whole entire closet and put every bit of the Christmas stuff in storage and went to Walmart and bought another tall stand with four shelves and put that in the closet right next to my other stand.  Now I have plenty of room and can find everything.  I love it.  It was four hours well spent.  Now I can find whatever I want easily and I have way more room to add MORE STUFF!! 
Luckily, this closet has the kind of doors that fold out and it opens the whole front of the closet so it's real easy to see what's in it.  Sometimes I go over and open both doors and just stand there staring at everything because it makes me happy to see all of my beautiful stuff.  I guess it doesn't take much to make me happy.
I have a shelf for herbal medicines that I've made and my essential oils.  There's a shelf for tinctures and the supplies needed to make herbal remedies.  A few shelves for my dried herbs and a couple of shelves to store jars.  I'm in heaven with my herbal supply closets new face lift.  Now I'm thinking about giving it a new name to go with its new look.  I just have to think of one.

My Fountain and Butchered Rosemary

I love my fountain.  It's one of the joys of my life.  See the green thing in the front corner of my fountain?  That's where I like to sit so I can stare at my beautiful yard.  This is a great place to go to sit and think.  At the back of the picture, you can see some of my potted herb garden.  I have 32 herbs growing there.  I spend many hours sitting on my front porch watching my yard while reading the textbooks for my ongoing Homeopathic courses.

In this picture, you can see the rosemary right behind my fountain. There are three of them now, I started out with five rosemary 18 years ago and two have died over the years.  There's a story behind my rosemary, as they've had their struggles to survive during their life.

I planted these rosemary 18 years ago at another house and when I moved from that house, I dug them up and carried them with me.  They were only 2 years old when I moved them, but they were already 2 1/2 feet tall and I was so scared they wouldn't survive being moved, but I had to try because I loved them.  Surprisingly enough, they all lived and this made me extremely happy. Then a few years later, we moved to the house we're in now and my poor rosemary had to be moved again. There wasn't any way I was going to leave them behind as they were very much a part of my life.  They all miraculously survived, again, and there was much rejoicing.  A couple of years later, two of them died, but the other three thrived and were monstrously gigantic.  They were so big and bushy that you couldn't even see through them and they were taller than me.  Then came the big drought during the summer of 2011.  So many branches turned brown and died that it took me 3 1/2 long pain filled hours to cut all of the dead parts off.  Now my beautiful rosemary look just like big bonsai.  Luckily, I think bonsai are so pretty.  I affectionately call them my rosemary bonsai and consider myself lucky that any of them survived. 
This is a secret about rosemary that I learned years ago.  When a sprig of rosemary dies, remove it IMMEDIATELY.  If you don't, then the limb will develop more and more dying parts until the whole limb is dead.  If you remove the dead sprig as soon as you see it, most of the time, the dying will stop and you've saved the limb.  Well, this is always the way it happens with my rosemary, so I assume all rosemary are the same.  After removing a dead sprig, keep your eye on that part of your rosemary to make sure the dying doesn't go to another sprig.  If it does, remove that sprig also.

Cactus, my first plants to love

When I was a teenager, I discovered cactus.  Within no time, I had 113 different cactus growing in the living room.  My parents were very tollerant of my new hobby and my unusual love of cactus.  I had so many pots that my dad finally had to build this big stand with a bunch of shelves for me to have somewhere to set all of my cactus.  I've always thought they're beautiful and over the years, I've had many many cactus. 

Flowering Cactus

Two years ago, I bought this cactus and put it in a clay pot so I could raise it in my fountain.  During the winter, I bring it in the house so it won't die.  The other day I was rewarded with three beautiful flowers that grew out of the top of the cactus.  The flowers only lived for three days, but during those three days I really enjoyed looking at the flowers and would make special trips outside to stare at them.  There's something about cactus flowers that give them an artificial quality.  They look so perfect that it makes them appear fake.
I'm also a sucker for a cactus that's striving to live.  When I pass by the cactus section at the store and see a cactus that's been knocked over and has fallen out of its pot, I always have to stop and pick it up and put it back in the pot.....UNLESS, it's the kind of cactus that will leave thousands of horrible little painful stickers in you.  Then I'll try to figure out how to put it back in the pot without actually touching it.  As I said, I'm a sucker for suffering cactus. 

Loving cactus is a painful job.

Hibiscus, trial and error

Hibiscus

A month ago I went to Lowe's and while I was looking at roses, I walked past a bunch of Hibiscus. Some of them had the biggest prettiest flowers on them, so I decided I needed two of them. I brought them home and planted one on each side of my fountain. After a month, they're still alive, so this makes me very hopeful for their continuing success. I've bought Hibiscus a couple of times over the years but they don't live very long. I think I always buy them too late in the growing season, and here in Texas, that's a big no-no. Also, this time I planted them in the front yard and they get way more water than when I plant them in the back yard. You know what they say, out of sight, out of mind. I think whoever said that first was referring to neglected plants stuck off in some random corner of the yard.
Both of my Hibiscus are a foot tall and ten inches wide, which makes this flower look HUGE. I measured the flower and it's a little over six inches wide. So pretty. I can't wait until my little plants have many many flowers every single day...I have plans for them. Have you ever had Hibiscus tea? If not, you should try it. That's what I'm going to do with the flowers, but for now I'm leaving them alone, as they don't grow too many flowers yet. The flowers bloom early in the morning and live only for that one day. Needless to say, I'll be picking them like crazy in a year or two.

Pet Spiders and Sweet Basil

I haven't written anything in a couple of days because I've been in and out of the house a lot. So, the other day when I went to take my grandsons to baseball practice, my oldest grandson met me at the door with a horrible spider in a bowl and said it was his new pet. I absolutely loathe spiders, Actually, I'm really scared of them. Kyle and I searched the internet until we found the spider he had and discovered, to my great relief, that they aren't poisonous. We dropped his three brothers off at baseball practice, then Kyle and I went to the store and I bought each of the boys a plastic home for their nasty pets. Kyle put his spider in his bug house and caught a grasshopper and moth for his pet to eat. His brothers were equally happy to get their bug houses. They caught grasshoppers to put in them, but wanted a spider like Kyle had. The next morning I told my daughter-in-law, Jennifer, that her nephews wanted a spider for their bug house and she started looking around and found two spiders and captured them. I found one in my house, blah, and after much screaming, jumping up and down, and running in place, I caught him and put him in a bowl. This was an amazing feat for me, as I was incredibly terrified. That night, I took the boys their new pets and they were ecstatic. Now I'm waiting until they get more bug houses at the store so I can get three more for the other grandkids. It's nice that they're all so easy to please.

Today my sister and I were in Tyler all day and we went to Drug Emporium, where I found lemon and myrrh essential oil. I've wanted these two essential oils for a few weeks, but had to wait for a Tyler trip to finally get to buy them. The problem is, I've waited to get them for so long that I can't remember what I wanted the myrrh for. But it doesn't really matter. There's always something I can use it in. 

Sweet Basil

A few days ago I potted my little sweet basil and put them in the greenhouse until they adjusted to being in their new pots. A little bit ago I put the pots in the front yard with my other potted herbs to see if they were strong enough to survive this Texas sun. I'll have to keep a close watch over them the next few days to make sure the sun isn't too much for them. Sweet basil is one of my favorite herbs, the smell of it always reminds me of spaghetti. Basil has so many different uses, it"s used in cooking fish and poultry, and is delicious when cooked with pasta, rice, eggs, tomatoes and all kinds of vegetables. It also tastes good in sauces, soups and stews. Basil is an excellent herb when used to make vinegar and oil. I've used basil to make oil and vinegar in the past and either one of them are a perfect addition to salads. During the spring and summer when I have basil growing, I go out every day and pick a leaf and put it in my pocket so I can smell it all day long. Oh, how I love that smell.

I also brought out the two long rectangle pots of calendula and put them on the patio of my fountain.   I hope the cats stay out of them, they won't really be safe from the cats until they get a little bigger and cover up the dirt more.  I'll have to check them several times a day to see if they're getting droopy. I can't wait until the flowers grow, as I have plans for them. I'll let some of the flowers die on the stem so I can use the seeds for growing more calendula next year. The rest of them will be used in tea and herbal medicines. I'm impatiently waiting for them to grow.

My big decision

I've been outside today potting my little baby sweet basils.  I grew them from seeds and have been waiting ever so patiently for them to get two inches tall so I could put them in their own pots.  I can't put them in the front of the house with all of my other herbs yet as they are too tiny and the cats will just make a bed out of them.  I put them in the greenhouse in the backyard until I can go out and find little sticks to poke in the soil so the cats won't roost in the dirt.  I've discovered in the past that this method works quite well.  A few days ago I potted a bunch of calendula that I grew from seeds in two long rectangle pots and had to poke sticks in the dirt all around them to ward off cats and that did the trick.  It looks kind of silly, but at least in a few weeks I'll have a bunch of pretty flowers to enjoy looking at while I drink my coffee in the morning.  Then I'll cut the flowering tops off and use them to make tea.  I can't wait. 

Oh!  I was going to tell you about the big decision I made yesterday.  My sister, Vannoy, and her daughter, Lin, are taking one of their many homeopathic courses and were getting ready to sign up for more courses and I gave it a lot of thought and decided I would do that course with them.  I signed up last night and will soon begin taking more homeopathic courses.  I believe I'll take another one after I finish this one.  I'm so excited.  I can't believe I'm going back to school.....again.  After college, I said, "No more school!  I'll never take another course."  So much for never.  Herbs are something I've been dabbling in for 20 years, so what better courses to take than something that you're really interested in.  Besides, it's going to be fun getting my hands on and reading all of those awesome herbal books. 

I better start cooking.  I've gotta take two of my grandsons to baseball practice in a little bit and have tons to do before I leave.  You know what?  I think I'm going to like having a blog.  :)

My first day as a blogger

Today is May 14, 2012 and it's my very first day as a blogger.  I never thought I would actually say that sentence.  Today has been very productive for me.  You know the days where you get a lot accomplished, but its nothing that you can see when you look for it?  That's the kind of day I've had.  One of the things I did today was arrange, rearranged and re-rearranged my herbal supply closet.  When I was finished with the re-rearranging, I realized the end product looked much like it did before I began.  Oh well, I love playing with my herbal supplies, so it was more like fun than actual work.

My husband brought me home a foot tall solar light frog this afternoon.  I put it out by my fountain where I can see it from my TV room window.  The frog is made out of metal and the light is green.  When it lights up at night his little eyes are green too.  I just looked at it and it's so pretty.

I spent a couple of hours today making a huge decision, but I'm tired and want to go to bed, so I'll tell you all about my decision tomorrow.  It's a life changing decision.  See you tomorrow.