Fun for a snowy (icy) morning

Susan Hess, the farmgirl over at Farm at Coventry tagged me for this game, so here goes...

6th Picture Meme!
Here are the rules to the photo meme
1.Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures
2.Go to the 6th Folder, then pick the 6th picture in that folder
3.Post that picture on your blog and tell the story that goes along with the picture.
4.Tag 6 other people that you know or don’t know to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog or an e-mail letting them know you chose them.
This picture was taken February 6, 2008 towards evening.
There isn't a great story about this, except that where I live, I have nearly a 360 degree view of the horizon. Since moving here 4 years ago, I have seen more rainbows than in the previous 40 some years all put together.

We walk out in the evening to get into the car, and the stars are so bright they nearly slap you. When there is an eclipse or a meteor shower, we can sit on the deck for hours just watching in the still summer coolness, listening to the cicadas and the nightlife in the woods nearby.

My personal favorite thing about this location is that it is possible to lie on your back on the deck and not see anything except the sky. When a storm is coming in, it feels as if you are IN the sky, and lying there it is as if there is nobody else in the world, nothing else... just you and the swirling, whirling clouds and the vast power of the forces of nature. At a certain point, it seems that if you don't get up and get inside you'll be sucked up into the sky and never be heard from again.

On any given day, there will be some wonder outside; some reason to call to someone, "hey! check out this cloud formation!" or, "look at the colors over toward Mount Joy!"

On the Fourth of July, we can watch fireworks in three different towns at one time, just sitting on the deck.

One day my daughter and I were driving into town, and I'd pulled over the car to look at some cloud or something in the sky. It's a country road... no big deal. As I put the car back into gear, she looked at me and said, "thanks for being the kind of mom who shows me the sky."

It makes me giggle a little. My grandfather was the one who showed us, mostly. If I had thanked him, he would have grunted and groused and said, "oh garsh-a monkeys, it's right there".

So that's my story.

I'm tagging:

Aquarian Bath

The Herbfarmer at Possum Creek

Ask the Herbalist

Little Big Voice

Prairieland Herbs

and

Faerie Made

Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds

created by http://www.wordle.net/

One World - One Heart

The winners have been chosen! They are (I really hope to be doing this correctly, by the way):

Robin at DreamsofBlueAcadia.blogspot.com
Connie at CettaCheese.blogspot.com
Donna at DSchrader.blogspot.com

Emails have gone out, and I am just waiting to get the addresses so that the first issue can go out. Congrats everyone. This was really fun. Thanks for letting me join in!


We are participating in this third annual event, One World - One Heart, with bloggers from around the world. Leave a comment on this post before February 12th for your chance to win.

The drawing will award 3 lucky winners with subscriptions to The Essential Herbal Magazine for one year - a prize that lasts all year long!


To view a free copy now, click on the link on the sidebar>>> to download.

When you enter our give-away by leaving a comment on this post, please be sure to include an email address so we can contact you if you are the winner. Drawing is to be held on February 11th and the winner will be announced on Feb. 12th. Good Luck!

Just a few more hours to enter! Will shut down voting at 5pm est, and draw at 6pm est. Come back to see if you've won!

It's almost February! Where has the long dark winter gone?

I know that the northern readers are wanting to come down here and give me a talking to about my thinking that winter is almost over. My tongue is planted firmly in my cheek, because I know the worst is yet to come. I like to think about spring though. It makes winter more bearable.

To be honest, I'm not much of a seed starter. Lancaster County is awash with greenhouses, herb farms, and the month of May (and parts of April and June) is crammed with herb festivals and herb farm open houses. It is a gardener's dream, and when I read of the people in other parts of the country who have nothing much except a hardware store or big-box store selection, I appreciate it even more.

So mostly, that is how my garden comes to life. Mostly I transplant what others have started and nurtured to a point that it might actually survive me.
What manages to survive my forgetfulness usually falls victim to the roving gangs of bunnies or the insatiably gnawing hunger of the unstoppable groundhog. Then there are the giant deer hoof prints I find in the garden, and the birds that sit waiting for the berries to ripen. But never mind that. If I think about that too much I might give up - and gardeners NEVER give up. So where was I?Oh. Right. We were talking about seed starting. There are parts of the country (and thriftier people than I) where seeds are the way to begin the garden. Many people wouldn't think of purchasing adolescent plants, and if they are vigilant, seeds will pay them back many times over.

We were talking on the Yahoo Group for The Essential Herbal Magazine, and some of the favorite seed sources can be found below:

Fedco Seeds

Horizon Herbs

ArborDay.Org

The Rosemary House

Botanical Interests

Heirloom Seeds

Rare Seeds at Baker Creek

Seed Savers

Landis Valley Museum Heirloom Seed Project

Abundant Life Seeds

They all have lots of great information, and I could spend several days just visiting seed websites. I DO grow most of my vegetables from seed. Things like eggplant, where I only need one or two plants, and melon, which takes forever to grow, I will buy the plants. Everything else in the veggie garden is from seed. Come to think of it, this should be a post about PLANTS! Maybe later.

While you're thinking about gardening, consider our book, The Essential Herbal ~ Under the Sun. There are several articles on different types of gardens, how to create good soil, how to care for seedlings, and get rid of pests.
We also have the CobraHead tool available on our website. This is one tool you don't want to be without when you are out there doing battle with the dandelion, the sour dock, and the bladderwort. This baby is ergonomically designed to help you get more bang for your buck. Less wasted energy, more effect. And it is one of the few tools that can take me through season after season without rusting, bending, or breaking.

And before the season gets started and you need something for those tired muscles, head over and get your supply of Gardener's Soap, Arnica Rub and Gardener's Tub Tea from our sister site: The Sibling Group!

Credit for the pansy picture goes to Deborah Stiffler. Deborah, of Scent-sational submitted this photo for the cover of the May/June '07 issue of The Essential Herbal.

Do you hear that? Me neither!

It would be hard to explain how much I do NOT want to be the kind of mom that holds my child back - through fear, guilt, or any of those motherly "gifts". As she's grown, she's done quite a bit of traveling without me, including 3 (now 4) foreign countries. It has never left me feeling anything except elation, knowing that she was having an experience... living her life as fully as a parent could hope. This time it feels a little bit different. This time it is a practice trip for college. This time she'll come back for a few months, and then fly from the nest. Oh sure, she'll be back, but it will never be quite the same again. From now on, she'll just be stopping by on her way to somewhere else.

That's what we want, isn't it? We want them to have been given the strength and fortitude to stand alone, to want to go ahead and leave us behind. Right?

The timing of this particular trip has driven this home for me. They left 2 days after her 18th birthday. A friend and I joked on the phone that I spent 18 years trying to keep her a safe distance from sex and drugs, and then 2 days later she goes to Amsterdam. Pretty funny.

She'll be back before I know it. And this will even be home for a while longer. It just felt like something that needed to be preserved.

So... otherwise, check out Radiance at HerbsfromtheLabyrinth.com. Sarah and I have been working on putting together a schedule of lunch time classes, every Wednesday through (I think) May. I hope she'll put up a list of classes on her site soon! I will get something up here next Weds. after I get home from Radiance. This coming Weds we will be doing a distillation demonstration. No charge for this one, bring your lunch and come check it out!

The new Yahoo! list for herb businesses, Grow Your Herb Business, has been talking up a storm, trying to help each other through the maze of social networking. Today was Twitter day. Follow me at www.twitter.com/essentialherbal. It is fun having other people who are as unsure as I am to bounce things off.

And with some sadness, I finally caved and started using Click 'n Ship for my parcel shipping. For 8 years I have enjoyed hand addressing the orders that come through here, but have realized that I can't keep up any more. That's good, but I'll miss that personal touch.

Here it is... NEW STUFF!

Our old Herb Bead kit and booklet have sold out. At this point, having them reprinted would cost almost as much as we charge for them, so it's been on my mind for a while. Hundreds of them sold, and we still have a bunch of the Incense Kits. I thought they were a really neat idea - one that came to me specifically because the short leftover coils were being tossed from another job when I worked at the printer - no kidding. Bye-bye little kit. You were awesome!

So what did we come up with, you might ask? Well! If you're familiar with our series of short book(lets) that cover specific topics for about the same price as a magazine - you know what we did! The booklet is crammed with the gleanings of scores of beadmaking sessions and classes. I've learned a lot from students over the years, and so the reader gets the benefit of all of those conversations and experiments. Find the book and bead powders HERE

Additionally, we are making the Botanical Bead Powders for separate purchase. Right now you can choose from 6 different varieties, and that number may grow depending on demand. With the powders, you just add liquid and string your beads on a wire to dry. Everything is blended into the powder so that you get strong, durable berbal beads.

And guess what? We're having a contest too! Any purchase between Jan 15 and 31 has/will be entered into a drawing, with the winner getting a book and three of the powders! Enter today! Subscriptions and renewals DO count.

Festivus (or something) at the ranch

If you've been reading along, there may have been some mention of our being unable to muster up any excitement for the holidays this year. I know how odd that may seem. After all, we live amidst a Christmas Tree Farm!!! We ladle out cocoa to happy revelers for a whole month. You'd think we'd be about the jolliest people around, wouldn't you?
Well.. every 5 or 10 years we hit one that just doesn't make it. Between all of the businesses between us and the sick brother, it turned out to be this year. We warned the kids and relaxed. It was a nice holiday season, but there were no piles of gifts, no decorations, no BILLS.
We'd agreed to celebrate sometime in the middle of January when we felt like it. Because Molly's 18th (NO!! it CAN'T be!) birthday is this week along with her departure to distant lands, we set our sites on yesterday.
You won't be able to tell by the pictures, because I was behind the camera, but let me just tell you, I looked fabulous in my Festivus regalia.
Oh - btw - before we start we are only borrowing this name until we come up with something better. We were looking for something that didn't come with a bunch of rules, but when you look Festivus up, it is just as fraught with rules as any other celebration. Our relatives a few generations back used to make up their own days. We had Cow Tail, Ashy Poodle, and a few other that have slipped my mind at the moment. Anyhow, my brother John got on-line before our gathering and picked up all the rules, reminding us that there should be no gifts, that we had the date wrong, and that we should be arm wrestling. Lucky for him he is ill, or I would have had to take him down.
We haven't settled on the "traditional" meal for our new holiday, but have agreed that it shouldn't be difficult and settled on chicken from the butcher down the road. He does it up either fried or barbecued, and the boys all like the wings. Nice cole slaw there, too. Of course Maryanne CAN'T just let that go, so there was also a lovely salad and stuffed shells. Oh - about those clips on her head... I made her go get dressed up. Geesh!
One of Rob's friends, Bryce, decided that he really needed to see what this was all about. He unwittingly teased Molly about being a lefty - not knowing that he was in a veritable vipers den of lefties. Does he look a little frightened? He brought candied yams with mini marshmallows. He's alright.
We'd traded names back in December sometime, and decided that the wrapping should be a gruesome as possible. John wrapped Mark's gift in a Victoria's Secret bag, for instance, and the most prevalent wrapping paper had grimacing monkeys all over it.
We all went to our little homes and passed out by late afternoon. Perfect holiday if you ask me.
Now all we have to do is wait for this little pigeon's birthday, and it'll be weeks before anything else happens!