[Herbalist] Inspiring dirt! and cough syrup

[foxryde]

How inspiring!  Sounds like you've got some great plans for next year.

It's beautiful here, too in Colorado.  I was just working in my new
greenhouse weeding and tending the babies and sweating!

The greenhouse is unheated as of yet, so I haven't put in a lot of tender
things.  I took 3 flats of rosemary, oregano, and lavender cuttings when
the garden was in full swing and about 75% are still alive.  I figured even
if they don't root out until next spring, any that I get is one less dollar
that I have to spend to set up the garden next year.

I am watering the 3 older beds, it is so dry here.  I hand watered the
production beds the day before yesterday and they are still okay for water
today, thankfully.  It's too cold at night to use the irrigation system, so
I am stuck with hoses and sprinklers.

I am also making my winter supply of cough syrup.  (Which always makes me
feel like Brother Cadfael.)  The garden told (I can explain, don't haul me
off to the funny farm quite yet....) me that there was going to be a
spiritual/emotional component to the illnesses of this winter.  It wasn't
until today that I realized what the garden was preparing for - all the
shocks of the terrorist attacks of this fall.

Okay, how my garden talks to me:  Every year I make a standard batch of
cough syrup (horehound  -boil 2 hours, strain, mallow root -boil 2 hours,
strain, infuse for and hour with thyme and mullien, strain, add just about
equal part honey, cool and store in the fridge) but to this I add what ever
the garden overproduces on.  Last year the garden went nuts with
boneset.  So I put it in the syrup and the flu last year had severe muscle
aches and pains.  This year the garden way way over produced on Wood
Betony.  So I knew that we were in for some really odd emotional/spiritual
needs.  What I mean by "over produce" is when there is a standard planting
that has been plugging away year after year sudden goes nuts and grows huge
for no discernible reason.

Happy Holiday Season, all,
Leonora

At 12:03 PM 11/14/01 -0600, you wrote:
>Well, a truck came by today and dropped off 10 cubic yards of aged
>compost.  It's beautiful.  I'm so excited!  And, today's weather is
>awesome, so I've started razing last years garden to prepare to build
>raised beds for next year.  Actually, I'm here at my computer for a few
>minutes because my fingers are sore from pulling weedstalks!
>
>My garden this past summer was a disaster.  Fauna got the better of my
>flora.  Between birds eating all the seeds the night they were planted
>and a voracious groundhog, I got four cherry tomatoes, two peppers and
>three tiny cabbages.  Tons of peppermint and oregano, though, and grapes
>and raspberries out the wazoo.  Oh, and asparagus - that came up before
>the groundhog breached the fence :)  Add to that the fact that I
>couldn't keep up with the !@#%$&*( thistle...  So, next spring, my
>garden will resemble Fort Knox.  Raised beds, which will be easy to
>isolate to keep critters out (and no weed seeds!,) stone paths that
>critters can't dig through easily, and a better fence.  Yay!
>
>Oh, and I've discovered the beauty of 18 gallon galvinized metal tubs.
>They are *great* for container gardening.  All you have to do is pound a
>few holes in the bottom with a nail.  They run about $11, they hold 80+
>lbs of soil, and you can fit about 24 garlics in one of them.  Whiskey
>barrels of comparable size are much more expensive.  And, the tubs have
>handles so you can move them around fairly easily, which is great.  I'm
>going to try transplanting some mint into one before demolishing that
>part of the garden, and starting up some more invasive herbs in them
>come spring!
>
>-Magdalena
>
>
>
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