Chaos Garden in September 2014

The chaos garden has onions in bloom (I am letting them go to seed so there will be more next summer),

Cone flowers going to seed (more flowers for next year’s garden), the new rosemary growing tall, lemon balm coming back from old roots, and so many other plants that have found their way to the patch.

But I spent the most time photographing a red spotted purple butterfly posing near the hydrangea. It posed on a leave near the hydrangea for several minutes - tired from an afternoon of cool breezes, opening and closing its wings, moving its proboscis.

After it fluttered away I noticed how much the news leaves on the hydrangea had been browsed by the deer even at this time of year when there should be plenty of other food for them.

Rhythm of Days

School and then my career set the rhythm for most of my days for almost 60 years! The clock was a driver for when I got up in the morning…when I left home…when I did things all during the day…when I got home. It was quite an adjustment when that ended. What would the new anchors be? Did I want to rejoice in wild variety every day? It took me over a year to settle into the rhythm that fits me best (for now). The ‘anchors’ are very basic: sleeping and eating!  I re-discovered very quickly that sleeping and eating at about the same times every day made is easier for me to feel healthy and ready for just about anything I wanted to do for the other times of the day.

Waking up. I don’t use an alarm clock any more (unless I have to get to the airport really early) but I am definitely a morning person. My rule is that if I wake up and it’s after 5 AM - I get up. Usually that happens between 5 and 6. I am dressed and going down for breakfast within about 30 minutes. The house is generally very quiet while I eat my breakfast and read…another 30 minutes.

Morning activity 1. There is a lot of variety in the activities during the day….but not so much the first one. Usually it is at the computer - meal planning, starting online coursework, checking news headlines, responding to email. Groceries stores open early enough that sometimes the weekly grocery shopping gets done in this time….or I may leave for a volunteer gig.

Snack. Since I don’t eat a big breakfast, I almost always have a snack between 9 and 10….a piece of fruit is probably my favorite.

Morning activity 2. The activity times before and after lunch seem to be the most variable of the day - house cleaning, gardening, volunteer gig, course work, reading or writing, or exercise.  I do a lot at the computer but it is not sedentary time - I bounce and lean on my Swopper chair all the time I am in front of the computer.

Lunch is always around 11:30. I am realizing that I rarely cook involved meals. A big salad, stir fry or soup are all quick meals if all the ingredients are already in the kitchen!

Afternoon activity 1. Add to the list of morning activities the possibility of a nap. This is the time slot if I take a nap…not a frequent occurrence but it does happen.

Snack. Hummus and carrot chips about 3PM - yummy and it fuels my afternoon.

Afternoon activity 2. In the winter time this may be the best time for outdoors exercise to catch the best warmth of the day.

Dinner. I like dinner between 5:30 and 6. It’s early enough that most of the year we have sunlight to see food we are cooking on the gas grill.

Evening activity 1. I am always trying to finish the blog for the next day or the videos for a course during this activity period….so it is usually in front of the computer again.

Reading/going to sleep.  Reading is my way of winding down for the day. Sometimes I can tell my metabolism is slowing down and I wrap myself in a small blanket to be warm and comfy in the easy chair…and then about 10 I am sleepy enough to go to bed.

One of things I’ve gotten better about over the past few years is preserving the basic “wakeup --> snack --> lunch --> snack --> dinner --> sleep” rhythm even when I am traveling. It takes planning but is well worth the effort to sustain the good way I feel physically at home when I am away.

CSA Week 14

On the morning before the pickup of the week 14 share, I had a few things left.

• I made a slurry of carrot tops and poured it into an ice cubes tray. The cubes will go into soup makings this fall.
• The butternut squash was something I completely forgot about. I decided to cook it for dinner; I’m sure I’ll have left overs to use in soup…or maybe I’ll make a small honey laced custard.

The week 14 share was very colorful: 2 pounds of tomatoes (I got yellow ones!), 2 snack peppers, 2 Japanese eggplant, 1 bunch of Swiss chard, 1 bunch parsley, 1 head Napa cabbage, 1 head lettuce, 1 pound of green beans and an acorn squash.

What a wonderful amount of color! The stems of the Swiss chard are my favorite.

The oranges and yellows of the peppers and tomatoes say ‘summer’ - maybe even more than the traditional red tomatoes (that I have from my own plants on my deck).

And the purple of the eggplant nestled in the greens of beans, lettuce, cabbage and chard leaves - the deepness of the color always surprises me.

I’m thinking stir fry (chard, green beans, cabbage…garlic and onions from earlier weeks), salad (tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, peppers, green beans, a little parsley). I am already planning for the parsley to be processed into a slurry and frozen like the carrot tops; I don’t want to go over the top on vitamin K!

The Cat Massage

Cats sometimes hold themselves aloof - walking away when someone calls their name, refusing to make eye contact. They often decide that they are suddenly tired of what had previously been their favorite cat food or treat. But our cats love a good massage!  They lose all dignity and simply enjoy being pampered.  At other times I often wonder what they are thinking. Their reaction to the massage makes their thoughts of the moment obvious.

Then the interlude is over. They decide to end it all by extended their claws - taking a swipe - and walking away.

My Nvidia Shield Tablet - Part 2

I’m continuing today with my initial experiences with my Nvidia Shield Tablet (part 1 was posted yesterday)

The first two apps I used were the Kindle and OurGroceries. There were a couple of library eBooks I had checked out and I downloaded them from the cloud along with eBooks I had purchased. The OurGroceries required authorization from the owner email (which is mine) so that was quickly done and the current grocery list appeared. I didn’t have a case yet for the tablet so I would not be actually shopping with it until the case arrived (as you can see from yesterday’s picture I has arrived now so I am totally weaned from the Kindle at this point).

My next experiment was the camera. It won’t replace my camera - but it did reasonably well with the zinnia at dusk!

iNaturalist was the most substantial learning curve so far. The app is being used for a BioBlitz the Howard County Conservancy is doing in a few weeks at Belmont. We had a training session last week complete with some field time. I learned:

Glare is a problem

How to zoom effectively with the camera

The nuances of the app itself (collecting observations and getting them connected to a project)

Realizing that I was going to be busy assisting the 10 students I’ll have in my group rather than making observations myself!

My most recent app loaded was Cronometer. I’ve use the web site on my PC for the past year or so when I want to take off a few pounds (it was about 10 pounds in summer 2013, right now it is about 3 pounds). Now that it is loaded on my tablet I can tweak the food list for the day from the tablet or the PC!

I’m very pleased with the tablet so far. I’ll plan another post in October since I’ll have some travel experience with the tablet by then.

CSA - Week 13

Wow - the warm days are flying by! We are in in week 13 of our CSA’s season. I don’t have much left from week 12: half a jalapeno pepper (which I will use in a stir fry tonight), garlic, and potatoes. The last two will last for a long time so I’m not worked about any waist.

I discovered that I like carrot tops both as an added green in salads and in stir fries. They are not as strong tasting as parsley more a bit more than spinach. Since carrots were included in the share again this week, I checked the tops as much as the carrots!

The small purple potatoes are being savors two or three at a time - diced and used in stir fry. It’s a great color addition to already colorful food.

I managed to get to the CSA pick up early enough to get some yellow tomatoes! Four pounds is a lot of tomatoes and I ended up getting red ones too. And then there were the roma and mountain magic tomatoes too. My plan is to eat the yellows ones sliced for a snack (maybe with dabs of garlic hummus), the mountain magic in salads, and the rest as tomato soup or sauce that I may end up freezing.

Hurray for the inclusion of pac choi again! It was in a share early on but it’s been too long. I like it it both stir fry and salads. The kale will work well in the same things….and I can’t resist making kale chips again.

Butternut squash is one of my favorites too. I usually just prick the skin and put it in the over for an hour….then cut it after it is already cooked (i.e. soft) and scoop out the seeds. If I have enough left over, I might make butternut squash custard (using the pumpkin custard recipe).

This is going to be another great week of good eating.

Favorite Memories of Summer 2014

Today - the traditional ‘last day of summer’ - I am savoring the memories of the past 3 months. It has been cooler than usual in my area (Maryland, near Baltimore) so the outdoor activities have been especially pleasant. Here are my top 5 memories from this summer:

The Deck Garden. The plants on the deck are a daily draw to go outdoors. There is always something changing - new flowers blooming, a tiny tomato forming, sweet potato vines spilling over the edge of the pot then the deck…and blooming, and all the associated insects and birds enjoying the plants (sometimes causing some damage) and the water in the birdbath and the pot saucers. I may change some of the plants next year - but using every available pot for something is definitely something to continue from now on.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. The place made my list because it was a new experience. I still enjoyed places I have been many times this summer (Brookside Gardens and the National Arboretum and the Howard County Conservancy Mt. Pleasant Farm) but the lotuses at the aquatic garden with the dragonflies that abounded were a high point of the garden visits this season.

Josey Ranch Lake. What a pleasant surprise it was to walk around the small lake near the library in Carrollton TX! It hosts such a variety of resident birds (although I did wish the nutria were not there).  It became the high point of ‘sights’ for the two weeks I spent in Texas this summer.

CSA Veggies. This was my first participation in a Community Supported Agriculture farm and I’ve enjoyed the enhanced flavor of fresh-from-the-field vegetables. I will do it again next summer!

Classes. I become more aware all the time of just how much I enjoy being a student. Whether the classes are online (Coursera and Creative Live) or ‘live’ at the Howard County Conservancy…classes have the effect of broadening my horizons and tweaking what I do. It may not be healthy to grow larger physically but growing mentally is always a good thing.

Happy end-of-summer 2014!

CSA Week 12

It’s hard for me to fathom that we managed to eat the entire week 11 share from the Gorman Produce Farm CSA except the potatoes and garlic - which will easily keep. I even cleaned out some things I had frozen from the weeks I was not in town earlier in the month: the squash, cucumbers, and fruit beety.  I was surprised at the amount of tomatoes we consumed. The large yellow ones looked beautiful and tasted excellent atop chili.

Now we have another week - another large crop of tomatoes (there were no yellow ones in the bin by time I got there….but the large red ones will be just as good). I traded the 2 poblano peppers for 2 banana peppers. I did get 2 jalapeno peppers and plan to make homemade salsa.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - August 2014

Noticing something worth celebration each day is an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. This month has been full of ‘little celebrations;’ here are my top 10 for August 2014.

The weekly pickup at the CSA. Somehow the pickup every Wednesday afternoon become something to look forward to….a celebration of the food bounty near at hand.

Weight. I decided to take off about 8 pounds and am thrilled that my diet/exercise plan I used a year ago to take off a pound a week...still works. I am celebrating the loss of over 4 pounds so far!

Tomatoes of any varieties are abundant in the CSA shares now. I find myself drawn to the tomatoes that are a change of pace from the traditional red one. Somehow the large yellow or purplish heirloom tomatoes seem extra special….worthy of continued celebration.

Fruit beety. This was on my celebration list last month too. I had frozen a batch I couldn’t eat right away - and I enjoyed eating it this month!

 Watermelon. I discovered that watermelon, mint, and frozen cucumber smoothies are one of my favorite summer afternoon treats…and it is even better because it fits on my weight-loss diet.

Home again. Being away from home for two weeks in late July/early August caused me to appreciate returning….a homecoming celebration.

Photography class. I celebrated the online photography class from several perspectives: the learning experience, a new source of courses, and as an activity I shared with my husband.

Symmetry and tiles. The Symmetry class I am taking on Coursera has led to other activities and I am still getting more ideas!  I am enjoying the course plus the historical books about tiles I found on the Internet Archive plus I’m going to take a local class on tiling to enable some creative projects! I’m celebrating the serendipity of it all.

Centennial Lake. My husband walks around the lake on mornings when the weather is good. I went with him last weekend and celebrated the place: the natural beauty, the wide diversity of people enjoying the path and fishing….and the prospect of seeing the leaves turn over the next few months.

Robin. The robin that has become territorial about my deck may be misguided….but I appreciate the bird’s presence. She has become part of the place. 

The Deck Garden - August 2014

The deck garden is probably at its peak this month in terms of foliage. The mint is overflowing the pots that also contain butterfly weed, a few carrots, and a tomato plant.

The cucumber plant is gone but the beans that were in the same pot are blooming again.

The marigolds and zinnias add color. Occasionally the morning glories have a flower although they have not done particularly well on the deck this year.

The sweet potato is still growing rapidly and the soil in the pot is beginning to heave - a sign that the potatoes underneath the plant are growing too. I have some peppers that came up from the ‘not quite decomposed’ compost; hopefully they’ll get big enough to be worth picking. I am starting to get the second crop of tomatoes from the deck plants.

I’m beginning to think more about what I want to grow next year on the deck. Right now I am leaning more toward plants with color (flowers and leaves) rather than vegetables. The CSA is supplying plenty veggies!  The sweet potato vine has been better that previous years in terms of growth and color (the new leaves are a deep red) so I may try to propagate cuttings from the vine after I harvest the sweet potatoes this fall.

Chaos Garden - August 2014

The Chaos Garden gets relatively little attention from me. I pull plants that I recognize as not wanting at all: grape vine, stickers, honeysuckle, blackberry canes.  Everything else I simply leave alone.

The hydrangea is recovering from the late (and hard) frost last spring that killed all its buds. It has no blooms this year but is coming up from the roots and should be almost back to normal for next spring/summer. I'll trim away more of the dead stems in my next weeding pass through the chaos garden.

There is lemon balm but it is not as overwhelming as in previous years. I cleared a lot of it away last summer. I like it in salads and to add to mint ‘tea’.

The chives and onions come back every year. I need to remind myself to harvest them more frequently.  The chives bloom in the spring and the onions are blooming now.

There are some flowers that are remnants of the butterfly garden phase of this plot: cone flowers and black eyed Susans. There don’t seem to be as many butterflies these days but they do attract the bees.

The rosemary I bought last spring has grown quite a lot and I am hopeful that it will overwinter. Last winter, all the rosemary plant in my area dyed form the repeated blasts of very cold temperatures.

The sycamore is shading the chaos garden more all the time. The hydrangea won’t mine - they thrive just fine in shade - but many of the other plants will not do as well. The old patch of day lilies never blooms any more but its progeny bulbs are doing quite well in the front flowerbed where I moved them last summer.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 23, 2014

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

In Old Blood - Looking at the changing that happen as we age…starting with the blood of a 115 year old woman from the Netherlands that donated her body to science.

Food Preservation - As this post comes out, I am hearing the author talk about the topic! I am always looking for new ideas on processing the surplus of food during the summer to enjoy in the winter.

Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Compare - This is an interface to visual epidemiological trends and levels worldwide from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (an independent global health research center at the University of Washington. There are lots of ways to look at the data. In the snapshot below I set the Bottom Chart to ‘Map’ and then clicked on ‘Migraine’ in the Top Chart.

Would you live in a shipping container? - A collection of websites curated by Marcelle Sussman Fischler on this top on Learnist. Some still look like shipping containers….others are transformed.

Most of What You Need To Know About Planet Earth, in Seven Minutes - A short animation from Kurzgesagt.

Profiles in Xeriscaping: The Chocolate Flower - Something to think about for next summer’s garden.

10 Tips for Eating Healthy on a Budget - Good ideas! I would add: 1) keep in mind that there are other sources of protein than meat (and almost all of them are less expensive for the nutritional content) and 2) be mindful of lower cost veggies that are high in nutritional value (sweet potatoes are an example).

Why Did Plants Evolve These Weird and Horrific Flowers? - I can’t resist the botanicals.

Providing futile treatment prevents other patients from receiving the critical care they need - Futile treatment (i.e. unbeneficial medical care) in ICUs is not good for the patient….and this study shows that it is hurting others. Perhaps a tangential take away from this article is that patients and their families need to be in a position to decline unbeneficial medical care.

Exploring the Waterworks Deep inside the Inner Gorge of Grand Canyon National Park - A video about the springs in the Grand Canyon. 10 of the 12 spring types are found within the Grand Canyon (see the 10 here).

CSA Week 11

It takes a lot of focus to not have tomatoes left from the Gorman Produce Farm CSA share each week. This I made tomato sauce with all the tomatoes that were left (the roma tomatoes). I am perfecting my technique; the steps this week were:

• Cut the tops off
• Put in a food processor
• Puree - skins and all
• Cook until about the right consistency for sauce adding seasonings if designed (basil and garlic were my choice)

 Everything else I had left will last without refrigeration: potatoes and garlic.

This week there are a lot of tomatoes again. The new type of tomato in this week’s share was yellow (I got 4 of them along with 1 red one in the 3 pounds in this week’s share). The yellow tomato I ate with yogurt on top last night was pretty and tasty. I’ll eat the heirloom tomato for my next ‘tomato as a side dish.’

The beautiful peppers are in a range of colors. What a way to add flavor and color to a meal!

The spaghetti squash will work very well under chili that my husband is going to make (using up some of the tomato sauce I am accumulating).

This upcoming week is going to be a ‘good eating’ week!

Still in the Trash

My last post on the topic of trash was back in January.  I decided to do another inventory.

What is changed from January?

Composting fruit/veggie parings and eggshells. The old joint compound buckets we have left from our basement finishing are great for loading up about half full then moving on to fill the next one. I have enough to hold the compost until it is ‘done’ and ready to go on into the chaos garden. I think my strategy will work even during the colder months!

Small pieces of paper and clean foil. I’ve become expert at collecting small pieces of paper in small boxes and putting the whole thing in the recycle when it is full. When I get pieces of foil that are clean (like on dark chocolate), I collect it into a ball of foil until it is large enough to go into the recycle.

Package avoidance. We have made an effort to stop buying food in packaging that is not recyclable. Microwave popcorn is probably our biggest change. We used to eat a lot of microwave popcorn but buy the plain popcorn now and use a Nordic Ware popcorn bowl to hold it in the microwave (this is healthier too). The CSA has also help reduce packaging - clamshells and plastic that sometimes is too messy to recycle.

So - what is still in our trash?

Packaging from food. Messy plastic or clamshells from meat purchases are the most significant food trash right now; we aren’t buying as much meat but the packaging is always plastic/foil shrink wrap or clamshells that are messy with meat juices. There are small items that are made of recyclable materials but are not allowed because of their size or sharp edges; these include the flip tops from canned goods (the most numerous in our household is from cat food) and straws. I am using up the straws I have on hand then won’t buy more.

Kleenex and paper towels. I am going to try using less Kleenex when I am around the house; I’ve dug out handkerchiefs I’ve had for years to put in strategic places and then into the weekly laundry every week whether they are used or not. I’ve already dramatically reduced the paper napkins we used by keeping a stack of cloth napkins on our table. We don’t use a lot of paper towels; mostly they get used for spills on the floor in the kitchen.  I’ve made the old towels more accessible so maybe we’ll forego the paper towels more often.

Used cat litter. This will always have to go in the trash. It probably already makes up a sizable portion of our trash.

CSA Week 10

I started out Wednesday morning making tomato sauce with all the tomatoes left in the crisper since I knew there would be more in this week’s CSA share. I ended up cooking all the red round tomatoes and about half the cherry tomatoes with onions (also from the CSA) and garlic and dried parsley (dried from the CSA share early in the season).  I even added some orange peel I’d dried from organic oranges from last spring!  My husband commented that the concoction smelled good.

I did pretty well clearing out everything else. The only items left from last week were a few potatoes.

As I expected there were a lot of tomatoes in the week 10 share. The heirloom tomatoes have become such a favorite that I swapped the jalapeno pepper for two more! They are delicious sliced and lightly salted. I got the black cherry tomatoes rather than the sun golds I had selected in previous weeks. And the poblano peppers were swapped for another eggplant.  Half of one of those eggplants was grilled with orange ginger sauce last night.

The potatoes were purple skinned/white flesh and small enough to be great for roasting.

The watermelon was big enough to require a second trip to the car! My daughter has been getting watermelon from her CSA in Tucson for weeks and the newsletter for them this week had some advice for using watermelon rind - either marinating it or using it in stir fry. I’ll post about my experiments in a week or so.

Lots of good eating in this week 10 CSA share!

Tomatoes

The first tomatoes of the summer were from my deck garden. I enjoyed watching them ripen. The heirlooms were a new treat. I already knew that eating a tomato ripened on the vine and eaten within hours of being picked was something to savor. So I watched both the two pots - heirloom and patio with anticipation as the tiny green fruits formed and then grew until they ripened. They ripened so that I spread the eating of that first little crop over a week.

Now I am making progress on the load of tomatoes that came from the CSA during the 2 weeks I was away. I may have to freeze tomato sauce before I pick up the next share!

But I am enjoying the bounty of tomatoes two times a day and hope that I’ll be able to finish off most of them by Wednesday morning. The heirlooms go first…then the cherry tomatoes because they are so easy to cut in half and include in salads.  I’ll make homemade tomato soup tomorrow - that always uses a lot of tomatoes.

There are more tomatoes on my deck plants (a second crop) and I’m sure there will be more coming from the CSA. Tomatoes are summer food to celebrate!

Good to be Home

I enjoy travelling….but I am always glad to come home. It takes me a day or two to recover from being away. This time I got back in the late evening so about all I did before sleeping was drink water to recover from the dehydrating effects of the plane flight and the time it took to get through the traffic jam all around the airport even though it was 10 PM at night! 

Getting back to ‘normal’ at home started the next day. I was pleased that my husband had managed to water the deck garden enough for the zinnias and marigolds to be better than when I left….and there were new peppers and tomatoes growing.  A hummingbird came up to visit the plants while I looked through the kitchen window. What a good ‘welcome home’! After breakfast, a trip to the grocery store was the first priority.

Then I tackled the normal ‘after traveling’ chores of unpacking, laundry, and putting the luggage away. I sorted the laundry and put the bag of birthday presents I had purchased for our cats on the table.  Evidently the smell of catnip from the toys had pervaded the dirty clothes because the cats enjoyed messing up the piles!

Now that I have been home for 2 full days, things are settling back to normal. I am catching up on Coursera videos and have gone through most of the snail mail. There is a pile of reading waiting and plenty of CSA veggies to eat before the next share is picked up on Wednesday. I’ve got some volunteer work scheduled for this week. The situation is just the way I like - at home.

Coursera Experience - August 2014

Quite a few courses ended in July:

• Diversity of Exoplanets (University of Geneva)
• Preventing Chronic Pain (University of Minnesota)
• Paradoxes of War (Princeton University)
• An Introduction to Global Health (University of Copenhagen)

I enjoyed all of them but there were times I thought I had started more than  I could possible finish. It is incredibly difficult to forego a course on a interesting topic; I need to develop more will power!

As I start August, only two courses are in session and I am enjoying the reduction. It is challenging to keep up with the classes while I am traveling….but I have succeeded in listening to the lectures. I’ll have to catch up with the discussion forums and assignments later. The two courses are:

Globalization and You (University of Washington). I just finished the module on Money last week. The history of monetary policy and outcomes was very well done. It may be the best module of the course!

Social Psychology (Wesleyan University). Every week there is something that surprises me....and quite a lot that is very applicable to everyday life. The forums are lively in this one ---- worth the time to peruse and participate.

I have one course that will be starting up in August after I am back home!

Beauty, Form, and Function: An Exploration of Symmetry (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore). I am looking forward to this course for several reasons: it is a very different topic area from other courses I’ve taken, it is offered by a different university that other courses, and I anticipate that this topic will benefit from the cultural diversity what will be part of the MOOC students.

CSA Week 8

The pickup and initial handling of our eighth week share from the Gorman Produce Farm Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) was totally up to my husband yesterday! He is not a big veggie eater so he grumbled a bit when first presented with The Plan. The Plan was for him to simply put everything in the crisper until I returned from my travels.

I turns out that there was something he can truly enjoy in the share before I return: a yellow flesh watermelon! When I was a child the yellow watermelons were always special; most of the time they came from a grandparents’ garden rather than a grocery store.

Third Mint Harvest of the Summer (2014)

The mint is even more prolific than usual this year because our hot weather in Maryland has been occasional days rather than long slogs…..and I have watered consistently.

I was surprised to find some dense patches where I had stuck some mint stems after stripping off the leaves after one of last year’s harvest. Mint is providing the ground cover around the iris in the front flower beds.  Some of the patch was cut for this third harvest of this summer.

The pots on the deck had grown back from the previous harvest. The post with mint and butterfly weed looked a bit overgrown so I trimmed the mint severely.

I was going to trim the mint in the turtle sandbox but decided to only cut about a quarter of the mint since I already had so much to process.

There were multiple baskets of mint leaves to rinse and then feed into the food processor.

I decided to use the leaves and tender stems (and then stick the tougher stems that remained around the gardens and other pots. Usually I stop at one processor bowl full of processed mint but there was so much this time that I forged ahead had two.

The drying process started on platters in the kitchen then in a muslin bag hanging in various rooms of the house….what a joy to have a mint scented house.

I may have one more batch in the fall….and then savor hot mint tea all winter!