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Posts Tagged ‘herbs’

Catching Up on Posting

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2025| 2 Comments »

I’m ashamed: I have not kept up on the blog. Well, I’m not really ashamed, but I am a tad bit regretful that I haven’t kept up. I think of things to write during the day when I am elbows deep in something, but evening comes, and all that inspiration has evaporated. Poof! Gone! Dissipated into the Nether.

We put in a new shed, replacing the homemade one that came with the house when we moved in here over 20 years ago.

I have been busy canning enough for the two of us: salsa, compote, conserve, chutney. Herbs have been dried or are drying for herbal teas. We foraged huckleberries and elderberries from the National Forest (those are in the freezer, awaiting a moment of inspiration).

We also foraged some more native plants for the yard, some of which have already been planted in the ground and some which are waiting for me. They won’t have to wait long: I have been busy moving plants around and tilling new sites for more plants. I’m waiting for the next round of rain to pass through and will use the ensuing dry days to my advantage.

I have filled the hummingbird feeders and hung them out: I took them down during the hot days of late August when honeybees get lazy and swarm the nectar. I melted and mixed up a new batch of bird suet. That came down when the weather warmed up and the starlings started coming around. The starlings are gone now, moved to parking lots. The weather is cooler and the suet won’t melt or mold now. We’ve started feeding the corvids and small songbirds again. (Corvids: California scrub jays, Steller’s jay, and crows.)

I have cleaned up the space between our shed and the neighbor’s lawn. That’s a bit of a sore point: our garage is set back three feet as per the law, but the yard maintenance person insists on mowing our portion, including over my ferns and day lilies. ARGH. I have tried little fences, cardboard, and now I am merely tilling up the strip to plant more flowers. When we first moved in, the elderly woman who lived in that house asked me to do that so her lawn person wouldn’t have to mow that (because we aren’t the best at keeping up the lawn mowing, preferring to let our yard go “natural”). I wasn’t in a place to do it then, but I am in a place to do it now.

Too bad that Selma died several years ago and we have had renters living next door since. Renters who did not mess with our three feet until the landlord hired this current lawn guy. I have even posted a sign on the side of the garage: DO NOT MOW OVER THE FERNS, PLEASE. He still hits them. So I am in a passive-aggressive war with him (and by extension, the landlady to the property). Yes, I could make a phone call, but it is infinitely more fun doing it this way. Don’t judge me.

(If you’re thinking I’m afraid of confrontation, you’d be very, very wrong. Most people are afraid of confrontation with me. When I come into a confrontation, I come with both barrels loaded and a back-up cannon. The world is much safer when I resort to passive-aggressive flower planting.)

I hacked my poor hydrangea back by at least two feet. It used to be planted under the pine tree (Nature rest its branches and rotting roots). The pine tree fell over some seven or eight years ago. The hydrangea is now in full sun, and summers have heated up the past five or six years. I have covered it with umbrellas, sheets, and tablecloths, but it still gets sunburned. The flowers fade too quickly. It has grown spindly. I could either kill it outright or prune it way back and see if it survives.

A woman walking her dog by the house commented on it. I told her I hopes I hadn’t killed it by my merciless hacking. She said she’d watch it and if it lives, she’s hacking back her overgrown hydrangea next fall. That’s me: inspiring neighbors to bush cruelty.

I also cut the Rose of Sharon back quite a bit, the forsythia, and the mock orange. They aren’t as noticeable a hack job as the hydrangea that was five feet tall one day and less than three feet tall the next. Turn me loose with pruners and a saw…

I meant to do a blog on sprinklers, highlighting our eclectic collection, most of which we don’t actually use. I may still do that. It sounds like a wintertime post. Meanwhile, I am considering this post finished.

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Herbs, Tea, and My Grandson

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »

My oldest grandchild is coming for a week-long visit in just a little over a week from today. He wants to visit before he gets too busy with his Senior year of high school and basketball, and, I think, he wants to check out his mother’s alma mater. It’s hard to believe we will be driving to Newberg to tour the campus of George Fox University again: wasn’t it just yesterday that we made the trip with our daughter? I secretly hope our almost-18 year grandson will decide to attend college there instead of Anchorage. Sure, the latter is closer to his parents, but the former is closer to us.

Z’s arrival means I have to create space for him in our little house. The “spare bedroom” is now my studio and cluttered with what my husband refers to as “the detritus” of my later life career as an eccentric. I have sculptures, paintings, canvases, paints, sewing, and more stacked up waiting for cooler weather and my attention.

Gardening takes up the good weather season, and I have herbs hanging and drying up here as well. Herbs I have forgotten to label: sage, betony and bee balm, feverfew, self heal, horehound, peppermint, and nettle. I can smell the peppermint. The sage and horehound are easy: sage has a distinct aroma and horehound is also soft and grey. The feverfew is obvious with its white blooms as is the self heal with its purple ones. The bee balm and betony are probably the same, just one was labeled as “betony” and one was labeled as “bee balm” when I purchased the plants.

The nettle is the easiest to identify: despite being dry and the same color as the bee balm, nettle still retains a “sting” to its leaves. The sting isn’t close to what nettle feels like when it is alive and bare skin brushes against it; it is just an irritating little prick felt when stripping stems of leaves that soon disappears. I have more nettle than any other herb, mostly because I do not allow it to go to flower or seed: the plant I am growing is safe within the confines of a planter where one cannot accidentally brush up against it without protection.

Because, yes, I have experience with stinging nettle and it wasn’t pleasant. I once crawled on my hands and knees into a mess of it growing in an aspen grove on the side of Chocolate Mountain. The full-face effect was… well, stinging! (Why would I do such a stupid thing? We were at a large camp-out with many families, I was a preteen, I was probably hiding from a sibling, and I wasn’t thinking about the ever-present rattlesnake danger of my childhood in the high desert of Nevada. Maybe I was pursuing a garter snake? Or pretending to be a coyote or mountain lion. Who remembers such mundane details?

I remember the facial.

(Cover photo: Betony in Bloom) (All photos are mine unless otherwise noted. Just FYI)

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Oregano. Plant it and More Will Come.

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , , , , , on July 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Weed Called Oregano.           

I don’t remember when I first planted oregano in my yard. We moved here in 2002 and I started carving out the “island” in 2003, so it was probably 21 years ago?

The “bed” of oregano has gone through some changes over the years: choked with that pesky grass, fenced off from dogs and to keep it upright, and it’s current incarnation that is 10x the original plant. I didn’t bother to rein it in this summer, but I did get rid of (most) of the pestilence grass.

We don’t purchase dried oregano in jars. Sometimes, I cut a handful of sprigs before it blooms, hang them upside down to dry, and scrape the dry leaves into an old jar that still has the original label on it: “Oregano”. We use it fresh during the spring and summer months when we can step outside and clip what we need off the plant. By Autumn it is fading and come winter, only dead stalks remain that I cut down and compost.

In spring, the cycle begins again.

I find new plants growing everywhere in the yard: oregano is self-seeding. I pull it with the other weeds, savoring the aroma as I do. I could allow it to grow everywhere and some day when I am too old to do my weeding by hand, that is probably what will happen: it will grow around the peonies, the rosemary, the lavenders, and the evening primroses.

I wouldn’t mind and the pollinators would certainly benefit from the profuse tiny purple blooms. I wonder what oregano honey tastes like? Some honeybee keeper must know: as soon as it begins to bloom, the bed is covered with honeybees and other pollinators.

Our dogs (one at a time over the years) will stand with their noses deep in the aroma, snapping at whatever bees they see. They get stung and jump back, shaking the head furiously before wading back in to snap at another bee. Our mantra is, “Leave the bees alone <Ruger, Murphy, Harvey, Sadie>!” They leave, but they always return to the scene of the crime.

I wonder if the bees taste like honey or like a good Italian dish spiced generously with oregano?

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Making an Herbal Candy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The recipe:

4 ounces fresh leaves and flowers. ½ tsp crushed anise seed and 3 crushed cardamom seeds. 2 ½ cups of water. Put all that together and simmer 20 minutes, then run through a fine filter until all you have is the flavored water. Over a low heat, dissolve 2 cups white sugar and 1 ½ cups brown sugar in the liquid. Boil over medium heat until “a drop in cold water forms a hard ball” (read below for my notes). Pour immediately into a well-oiled pan to cool. Score when partially cooled.

I decided to try making candy. I used to make it when I was younger and lived in a drier climate but that fell by the wayside along with my desire to become an herbalist when we moved to the Willamette Valley. Candy requires low humidity or it fails. I won’t go into all the weather around here: it rains in the Willamette Valley nine months out of twelve. We don’t get the most rain or the most humidity, but the days when I wanted to make candy were usually too humid. So I just didn’t bother.

Besides, you need a really good sense of when “a drop in cold water forms a hard ball” stage is reached. I don’t have that so I rely on thermometers when – and IF – I decide to make candy.

I love to make candy. I’ve made a killer penuche and I’m no mean hand at making divinity, or I was when we lived in dry country, and I frequently made candy. I even made a great horehound candy once.   That was BC (Before Children) and Before the Willamette Valley, so a Very Long Time Ago. I’m ancient, you know.

I grew horehound this year with the intent of repeating that long ago success. It grew, blossomed, and I trimmed it back using a recipe I found in an herbal remedies book (the original recipe having been lost in multitude moves over the decades).

It failed. But I will try again! Below are my errors and the recipe, should you wish to try your hand at this.

4 ounces fresh leaves and flowers.

I trimmed back the horehound as far as I dared. With stems, I only procured 3.5 ounces. Well, it should still work.

½ tsp crushed anise seed and 3 crushed cardamom seeds. Don’t have either, but I can substitute nutmeg and cinnamon to taste.

2 ½ cups of water. Put all that together and simmer 20 minutes, then run through a fine filter until all you have is the flavored water. Over a low heat, dissolve 2 cups white sugar and 1 ½ cups brown sugar in the liquid. Boil over medium heat until “a drop in cold water forms a hard ball” or approximately 252° F (according to Betty Crocker). Pour iimmediately into a well oiled pan to cool. Score when partially cooled.

NOTE: The candy is a bit too soft. I should have used the Interwebs instead of a dated Betty Crocker and the candy should be cooked to Hard Crack stage, or 300° F (149° C). That’s a minor mistake. The candy is still usable and storable (use wax paper). But I would prefer a harder candy.

It is also a bit bitter. Let’s be honest: lot bitter, really. It might be OK if you have a bad sore throat and a linger cough, but… It’s not Ricola™ by any means. It would probably be less astringent if I had not used the stems. I’m pretty certain the stems ruined it.

The substitution of cinnamon and nutmeg was a negligible factor, but I think the next time I try this recipe (and there will be a next time), I will use the cardamom and anise seeds.

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A Few Herbs in my Garden

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , on July 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I have a surprising number of herbs growing in my garden, some wild and treated like weeds, some I have purchased with intention, and some that I purchased but didn’t have a clue they could be used medicinally or otherwise. I knew there were four herbs in the picture, but when I started looking up the different plants and uses, I discovered that ALL the plants around the fountain bird bath are useful herbs. I’m always learning new things in the garden and often kicking myself for the mistakes I make. But mistakes and learning are what make gardening an adventure!

As a side note: the plants in pots won’t always be leaning like that: we’re staining the deck and I had to move them temporarily. What we do for a photo op, right?

Bugleweed (Lycopus europeus) (Ajuga is another name). I bought the Bugleweed as a ground cover a couple decades ago and have been trying to get rid of it ever since. I had no idea it was an herb and had medicinal uses: hyperthyroidism, coughs, sleeplessness. I’m still on the fence about eradicating it entirely as a mistake or trying to fine a place where I want it to work its magic of crowding out other plants. It has a pretty blue/purple flower in the spring.

The tickweed (bidens)was purchased for color and length of blooming period. I’d never noticed them before at plant sales but when I was shopping for plants to put around the birdbath, it stood out for color and the fact it will bloom all summer, no dead-heading necessary. It apparently has seeds that cling to your pants like ticks cling to deer. I didn’t know that when I bought it, but it’s only one plant… Right? As an herb it has antibiotic properties. I probably will never use it.

Serbian bellflower (Campanula Poscharskyana). I just recently traded it out of a pot where it wasn’t doing well and put it in the ground by the birdbath. I learned the flowers are edible along with the leaves, making it more than just a pretty blue flower: it is a salad green! Of course it isn’t blooming right now, but maybe I can revive it! (The bloom is from another bellflower in the yard.)

Curry plant  (Helichrysum italicum): We bought that for the aroma, the sage colored leaves, and the pretty flowers. Curry plant is not the same as the spice curry which is a blend of spices, but it smells like the spice. It has minimal uses in the kitchen as an edible as it only imparts a very light curry taste to food.

I purchased the blue hyssop (hyssopus officinalis) a few years ago thinking I would use the leaves in tea some day. It grows scraggly, rather like an English thyme, and the leaves are tiny like the thyme. I currently have some drying – not enough to make a cup of tea, but it is a start. It has little blue flowers and is a great addition to a pollinator garden. There are a variety of kitchen uses for this herb as well as the medicinal uses (hyssop is mentioned several times in the Bible as a “cleansing” herb). It can be used to treat ulcers, asthma, and head colds. It is a great antioxidant!

Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa). Medicinal uses are antibacterial, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory. Culinary uses include teas and as a spice added to soups. It is also a pollinator plant and it is a native to North America. The bees and I are waiting for it to bloom.

Last is the Mystery Plant. I was looking for a ground cover at a garden sale and this one jumped out at me: it blooms all summer, giving me the color I want. So I bought it, brought it home, and discovered the identifying tag had been removed at the point of sale, presumably for the seller’s inventory purposes, but now I had no idea what I purchased! I had to wait for it to flower to key it out. “Mystery Plant” is Self Heal (prunella vulgaris) is also known as Heal All. You can use the leaves and flowers in salads or tea. It has much the same properties as the Blue Hyssop. Pretty all summer AND useful!

Finally, a disclaimer:

I do not know enough about herbs to encourage the reader to use them and as with any new thing you add to your diet or healing regimen, do so with caution. I am writing about these herbs as much to learn about them as to show off my garden. ALWAYS research first. And certainly don’t trust ME. I’m only in it for the pretty flowers.

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A Little History of How I Came to the Garden Path

Posted in gardening, tagged , , , , on June 15, 2025| 1 Comment »

I took a bit of a hiatus from blogging. It’s a mental health issue: I struggle with anxiety, sensitivity, and depression. Sometimes, no matter how wonderful life is, I get sidelined psychologically. Emotionally. Whatever – I simply get sidelined.

I have stayed busy, and I have not forgotten that I was going to write about my adventures in herbs next. I do think I will bounce back and forth between herbs and other things gardening, because I am just (re)learning about herbs and I have several other projects going on in the yard as well (hint: water features!).

To write about herbs, I need to revisit the past. I started out gardening with the intention of becoming an herbalist way back in the 1980’s. I’d just landscaped my first yard, a project that was more about digging out unwanted periwinkle overgrowth and discovering what was underneath that mat of ground cover than it was about actually designing a garden of flower beds. I was also a young mother, unemployed, and a volunteer at a local birth center. We were poor and heading deeply into debt, living on the edge of losing the first house we attempted to buy. Life comes at you hard.

We started attending a small Pentecostal church. The pastors and most of the congregation were our generation, so lots of little kids, nursery duty, and spiritual changes all happened at the same time. For the record, I hate nursery duty: I loved my kids but am not so fond of other people’s tots. You know how it goes: “from a distance and only when I can give them back to their rightful owner”. I never minded teaching Sunday School or Vacation Bible School with older children, but those little wobbly-legged creatures – and especially those that cannot walk yet – are cute from a distance but not when you have to care for them in a group.

The ”Church” frowned on a lot of things. The pastors were just coming out of legalism, but the tentacles of bad teaching were wrapped around a lot of hearts and minds. Herbalism equals witchcraft and witchcraft is bad. Witchcraft is Satanism. Heck, midwifery is bordering on witchcraft. I gave up volunteering at the birth center and I gave away my books on herbalism. I embraced the theology of the day. Eventually we split away from the whole movement and that’s a story in itself and one I am not going to tell, at least not now and not in this forum. I still have a lot of friends from those days and they weren’t all bad and cultish.

I – We – have been “unchurched” now for nearly fifteen years. My husband slipped out the door long before I did and I left reluctantly. There was no place for me without my husband. We were paying off the last of our bad debts, we’d moved into the house we live in currently, I was working full time, and our children were moving into adulthood. During that time period I landscaped my second yard. It was a full-on landscaping job but a very small trailer park yard.

I started working on this yard with all the energy of a much younger woman (twenty plus years can age a body). The last couple years, I have begun to look into growing herbs and becoming an herbalist after all. A dream deferred and now there’s time to work on it. I have the space, the time, and no critics to listen to. I’m in a different place spiritually although I would argue I am just as strong a Believer as I was then – I merely choose to follow a different path, a path I believe is one that God set before me. The garden path.

I never fully gave up on growing herbs. I’ve always had a few in the yard and I’ve frequently dried flowers and herbs somewhere in the house by hanging them from the ceiling in bunches. I’ve planted oregano, borage, lavender, rosemary, parsley, chervil, sage – all the culinary herbs. Now I am branching out into some of the medicinal herbs and the foraged herbs. I will attempt, over the next few posts, to elaborate on what herbs I am growing, some uses, and how I have used them (or intend to use them). Some are surprising to me, some I have always known, some are new, some are old, and some I have had to eradicate from my garden (comfrey comes to mind).

So – here’s a patch of oregano to spice your appetite and I promise to write again soon.

Oregano is basically a weed, IMO. A tasty bee-friendly weed, but a prolific and self-seeding one all the same.

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Spice of Life (Confessions of an Herb Collector)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 26, 2014| 1 Comment »

My husband and I once were in the humble position of needing a place to stay. We had two small children, a dog, and two cats. We owed a lot of money and we had just spent a month or two living in the nursery portion of our local church. Church friends opened their home to us right after Thanksgiving, and we gratefully moved in. The hope was that we would soon be back on our feet and in our own home, even if we had to lie to the apartment manager that we didn’t have a dog (and consequently hide her in the garage, but that’s another story).

These generous church friend were very, very, sweet people, but… two blended families and two different world views can strain any good relationship, and they did not believe in celebrating Christmas with heathen decorations. Read: they were not going to bring a tree into their house.

Fortunately, we were out within two weeks, and living in the afore-mentioned apartment with our dog hiding in the garage. We bought a tree and decorated it and our friends didn’t hate us.

These friends were wonderful hosts and we tried to be wonderful guests. I remember thinking I would help with dinner. I don’t remember what I planned on making, but given my cooking skills, it had to be pretty simple. I could have been offering to bake something, which is more likely than offering to cook something. It doesn’t matter: when I opened her cupboard, I found only plain iodized salt and finely ground black pepper.

“Where are your spices?” I asked.

“Spices?” Blank look. “There. You’re looking at them.”

“No, I mean like cinnamon, or sage, or basil or…”

She had plain salt and black pepper.

This past weekend, I was preparing my grocery list. My husband (who is the cook in the house) wants to try out a new recipe. Last week, I emptied the bottle of bay leaves. I knew I needed at least two herbal/spice ingredients: bay leaves and ground coriander.

Something prompted me to check my unruly stash of herbs and spices first. Generally, if I can’t find something, I buy one.

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You can see why I had a “bit” of a problem with the spice collection of my long ago Christian benefactor. My collection takes up an entire cupboard. You can also see why I can’t always find what I am looking for.

I have 36 different herbs and spices in there. I know. I counted them yesterday. 59 different bottles or tins (not counting the weird spice mixtures like “Creole Seasoning” that we picked up somewhere, and excluding all salts and black pepper – coarse and fine ground).

There are multiple jars of celery seed, basil leaves, paprika, smoked paprika, real vanilla, whole cloves, ground cloves, cumin, curry, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, and ginger. The winner is Cream of Tartar: I have four bottles of that (thankfully, it has multiple uses). I also have an unopened jar of bay leaves and a jar of ground coriander (scratched those off of my grocery list).

I did not also inventory, but I know I have: pickling salt, Kosher salt, plain iodized salt, sea salt, and an herbal sea salt mixture my husband loves.

I don’t know why I have a partial bottle of (yuck!) imitation vanilla flavoring.

I don’t keep herbs or spices forever – they lose their flavor. These are all purchased within the past five years or harvested from my garden in that time period. I use most of them, and if I don’t use them, my husband uses them.

I walked down stairs, took this photo and headed back up here. Don looked up from his chair and said, “You took a photo of that mess?”

“Hey, I confess my sins.”

“My wife: the obsessive compulsive herb shopper.”

Yeah, but I had the spice you need for your new recipe, Buddy. And I purchased a new bundle of garlic cloves. So there.

(This is also why I nearly died of shock when my then-ten-year old niece moved in with us and she flavored everything with plain catsup. I like to think we are part of the reason she is now an addicted ‘foodie’.)

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