Lovely Lavender!

These beauties are living the good life. I had originally planted them (temporarily) in a gladiola bed just until we had finished the larger herb garden where I had planned to do a hedge of lavender as an outline for my working garden. BUT, they decided on their own that they wanted to stay put and take over the glads' home. I can't argue with them since they are so extremely happy and prolific.

Even though I am very allergic to bees (and any other bugs for that matter), I am really happy to see so many more out and about this year than over the last few. The crisis with the honeybees and the Colony Collapse Syndrome hit our area in a big way. The almond growers were really hurting as they depend on these tireless little workers to pollinate thousands of acres of almonds in our valley. On a much smaller front, our little gardens benefit greatly from the attention and wouldn't be able to survive without them. Somehow it seems that all is starting to right itself in our corner of the world when Spring finally arrives and you hear the unmistakable buzzing from your posies!
I will be harvesting some of the lavender this weekend, especially the English variety which is a little behind these beauties. I am playing with some different recipes and concotions based on the use of both fresh and dried lavender. By the end of the weekend, I will have projects strung all over the house in various stages of drying and curing. I am getting the feeling that Michael thinks I'm a mad scientist sometimes..poor guy really didn't know what he was getting into!

Spring Surprise

When I finally decided to get with it and pull the monster weeds & bermuda grass out of my extremely overgrown lavender bed, this little blast of beauty met me! I planted these two years ago and didn't see them last year at all, thought the gophers (or Chandler - you'll meet him in a day or so) had eaten them.

This is one of those fun things that I love about gardening, the little happy surprises that greet you when you aren't expecting it. We've had some strange weather with the heavy rain, then sunshine and warmth, and then more water. It's really making our little plantings grow like crazy (as well as the out of control weeds.) The hubby has been spending most of the day outside trying to get the grass mowed while I'm trying to get all of the plantings lined out and moved from the makeshift greenhouse/room. I've also worked a lot the last few days on several new products that I am hoping to introduce to our line in the next few weeks. Lots of experimenting going on!

My patient & good-natured other half has started making me some great new planters by recycling shipping pallets we get for free from a good friend. I found this project (along with quite a few others) on a great website: http://www.instructables.com I keep printing out new things that catch my fancy & he's been a good sport about trying most of them! Anyway, I have some new mints that are going directly into one of the new planters - we had a catnip rebellion a few years ago so I'm a little over-cautious about these little invaders and keeping them confined. (One note about these planters - if you decide to try it, be sure you get either untreated or heat-treated pallets, the chemically-treated wood could leach nasty toxins into your plants..)

With my next post, I'm going to start introducing the inhabitants of MoonCat Farms - starting with the afore-mentioned "Chandler" (Bing). He's a doozy!

HAPPY SPRING.........