Monday, November 28, 2011

Ten Green Bottles


The other evening I spent a bit of time putting up and organizing many of the herbs I have grown over the summer and had drying.  Wooo!  the excitement of my life is just too much sometimes I know!  I take it a little at a time so I won't be overwhelmed with it, you know? lol!  Anyway,  I have been working from the beginning here to grow as many medicinal and culinary plants as I can and have a fair collection going now.  Most of them are perennial, so once established I really don't have to worry about them anymore.  Just make sure I harvest and dry plenty before winter to make it through.  I ran through my clear jar collection before I ran out of herbs, so I must go searching for some more jars.  Ooh, and I made some way cool labels for the jars on Word and printed them out on individual stickers. You can kinda see if you enlarge the photo.  If you have any available dirt it just makes so much sense to grow your own, rather than buy all these herbs.  Most are super easy to grow and of course, fresher if they are just outside your door, therefore the taste is always superior.  As of now I grow or wild harvest peppermint, catmint, catnip, lemonbalm, passionflower, feverfew, echinacea, dill, parsley, vitex, oregano, basil, chives, sage, mountain mint, beebalm, lavender, red clover, thyme and probably a few more.  I use these for cooking and teas, usually medicinal or just relaxing.  For example, sage tea is a great cough suppressant.  I hope to add many more herbs to my collection in years to come.
I thought it would be funny to label a few jars Eye Of Newt, Bat Wings or some such because it never fails that when newcomers see my pantry they say, "wow, are you some kind of witch?"  At least, I think that's what they're saying......witch?  b......?  Anyway!  It cracks me up that so many people think that if you use stuff like this you're like, "really out there"!  woooowoooo and all that.  Pfft!  Of course, I guess in all fairness, the animal skulls laying around don't really help my rep but they are just decorations.  Seriously.

Hey!! We are supposed to get snow tonight!  Snow!!  in November in Alabama?  Must be that global warming... Really, I don't believe I ever remember it snowing this early in my time.   Hey, I think I said that last year around the first week of December??  Hhhhmmm.


8 comments:

Island Rider said...

Cool. Literally.

Anonymous said...

Looking good ER. I do all my herbs, but also many of my vegies so I have a year round supply of what is normally only available seasonally.
Love the new look too, very "you" :)

MamaHen said...

Hey IR! good to hear from you! Yep! lol!

Hey Molly! thanks! yeah, I didn't think to mention that I dry many fruits and veggies also. It's a great way to store food without using power.

HermitJim said...

Sort of gives the place a real homey look, I think!

Very practical! Of course, I would expect nothing else from you!

Good work, my friend!

myamuhnative said...

Are you drying the herbs in a dehydrator or just hanging to dry?
They all look so fresh!

Caroline said...

OMG! With all those wonderful herb filled jars, how could you not have the odd eye of newt or toe of frog to bring a little humor to your kitchen. I love it!

MamaHen said...

Hey Jim! thanks!

Hey Mya! I just hang mine to dry in the pantry. I meant to show that actually and forgot. :(

Hey Caroline! lol! yeah, i'll probably just have to do that!

Beatrice P. Boyd said...

Those spices are looking good, Annie. We tried drying some oregano and basil, but think they stayed too long hanging in the grennhouse cause they looked too brown and dried out, not nice and green like yours. We tossed them ours. But we are eating the berries I froze this summer, cept they got sort of mushy when defrosted.