I would like to dedicate this post to Derrick Austin, a former colleague of mine from Columbus Metropolitan Library. Derrick's season on Earth has passed but his kindness, his example, and his memory will live on.
I've been harvesting chamomile for many years now with mixed results. The first couple years I got loads of bug free blossoms. Then the aphids discovered the chamomile. For the past few years the aphids have been awful. I've tried adding ladybugs. I've tried a little dish soap and water. When I soak the chamomile in salt water it kills the aphids but the little guys are so light, they are impossible to separate from the blossoms.
Now while I've never been a big tea drinker, I cannot bring myself to try a cup of homegrown chamomile tea, aphids and all. It's one thing to know that theoretically and statistically, a person ingests a certain amount of bug and other matter in their food. It's another for me to knowingly swallow the aphids even after their little exoskeletons have been boiled...it just means they are the cleanest exoskeleton's around.
This year I had an added complication, ants. Seemed like when I picked the chamomile as I still use it for bath products, there were a dozen ants crawling in the jar. At first I hoped that maybe the ants were eating the aphids but alas, not.
The first night I discovered this, I did not take a Zen approach. I squashed a handful of ants then saw more crawling in the jar and just tossed the whole contents back into the herb garden, disgusted. Then a few days passed, and the plants were ready to pick again and I repeated it to find just as many ants in the jar. This time, I gave myself time to think about it. I put the jar on the front porch out of the rain and waited. The next night, all the ants had climbed out of the jar by themselves.
Sometimes we just have to let the ants leave the jar on their own.
This year's harvest is at the top. This goes mostly towards my herbal oatmeal facial rub and maybe someday for soap.
And chamomile season has passed. The plants have dried up and reseeded. chamomile gives way to calendula.
I'm so lucky that my green thumb friend set me up with about a dozen plants that I planted around Memorial Day and they just keep producing. I'm very hopeful to make soap with them sometime .Andrew has already made a mold and has more of an interest in making soap then me actually and he is going to use lye. I'm not going to be anywhere near him when he does this, but I would like to incorporate calendula, known for it's skin soothing properties in some soap.
I've been trying a fistful of blooms alongside mint and will soon need another jar.
I've also used calendular in the eczema salve I make once in a while for friends.
As I said the calendula has been going in the dehydrator along with the mint...
I've been home to water more this summer and had help from a neighbor to water too so that might be why for the first time ever, I've gotten two cuttings of mint. This picture is before the first cutting and just this weekend I took a second off of what had actually regrown to mimic this picture!
I have more mint than I know what to do with. Message me if you want some mint mailed to you in tea bags.
And dahlias. They may become a new floral obsession if I can divide them later on fairly easy. I picked up four dahlias for .50 a piece on sale, and one green thumb friend told me I can overwinter them in the basement and regrow them from year to year. Another green thumb friend told me to plant them so they can gain energy.
It took me a good two weeks to plant them in pots, and they used the time industriously to sprout.
And it did take about a week for them to surface from the dirt.
Then presto!
I find the plant on it's own very pretty. They are so much larger now. All my gardening blog posts are going to be 3 or 4 weeks from the past at this point. Really messages in a bottle now.
And speaking of time, I am going to get some little fingerling potatoes in the oven so they are crispy for dinner. I'll try to get another post out this week. We will just have to see...
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