Posts under ‘Herbs’

After my original lavender plant overwintered successfully from Garden Year One to Garden Year Two, I decided to see if I could go for three years in a row. At the end of the season last year, I buried it (as I had the year before) in a larger pot and sat back for the [...]

It’s been a long time since I completely started over with my spice rack. I ditched my spices when I moved to Iowa, but already had a spice rack of sorts waiting for me when I got there, so I didn’t have the delicious opportunity to start from scratch. I like to use moves as [...]

Apparently, over the winter, someone decided to throw approximately 1,000 small twigs into my garden plot. It’s lucky that, although I definitely have areas in which I exhibit great symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the garden is not one of those areas. Therefore, on Sunday evening, I picked about 428 of those twigs out of the [...]

I have been struggling with a distinct lack of gardening momentum. The weather finally kicked into gear and warmed up, and yet my garden plot sat, in the backyard, untidy and neglected. Sure, there’s some garlic poking up through the ground, but the rest? Home to dead sage, dead Texas Tarragon, dead rosemary, dead greens…well, [...]

I consider the day the Oscars ceremony airs to be something of a national holiday. I love movies, but for years, have harbored a not-so-secret obsession: I must see all the Best Picture nominees before the award show, and I keep a list from the second the nominations press conference ends to track how many [...]

After The Mint Killer prescribed me a sun lamp and more than one other friend commented on how worried they’ve been about my infernally snowbound-cranky mood, I realized two things: it was time to take drastic action, and I have been hoarding summer-like therapy in my freezer. The inspiration for this particular plan of attack [...]

I know I promised a week of travel stories and photos, but in the meantime, there have been more pressing issues in the garden. Here’s the situation. I am not done gardening for the season. No way, no how. There’s more to be done. My sage is acting like it has no issues with the [...]

I don’t know why I get so lazy about salad dressing. It’s an easy thing to make, really. Mix some oil, some acid, something to give it pizzazz, and call it a day. Salad dressing made at home inevitably tastes better than anything that has a shelf life of a year or two, and it’s [...]

I have an admission: I love pizza in all its forms. I love it when it’s gourmet and brick-ovened and topped with choice ingredients. I love it when it’s out of a box, taken from the freezer, and baked on the rack of the oven (DO NOT BAKE THE CARDBOARD DISC.). I love it delivered, [...]

What I’m about to say may make me the biggest hypocrite in Iowa, but I’m going to say it anyway: I’m ready for a little cold weather. No, I’m not interested in snow or ice or sleet or frost or shoveling or sanding or salting or adding chemicals to the sidewalk or whatever the rest [...]