My Garden Is Berzerk

I took garden pics in anticipation of this post tonight, and it seems that I am missing a few key shots. Guess I was just too overwhelmed to get it all in. This is a partial view of half of my garden:

This is my box of herbs. You can see catnip, chamomile and wormwood. There's dill and echinacea in there somewhere. The potted herb in the foreground is clary sage. While the herbs were all small, and I made an impulse purchase at the nursery of some snow pea starts and threw them in that box. They took up more room than I expected but they sure are good:

I wanted a box of mints. I put several kinds in here, a bergamot mint, a chocolate mint, variegated mint, plain old mint mint, and then I ended up adding in some zinnias and stinging nettles, because I heard that nettles increase the strength of your mint. I have no way of knowing if they did so or not, but I do know that I am quite wary of sticking my hand in that box now. Ouch! (I've done it a few times without thinking...):

I became a collector of tomato plants. Everytime I went to a nursery or a hardware store I would see a kind that I did not have and bring it home. I ended up with 26 of them. They are falling all over eachother; Early Girls, Better Boys, Brandywines, Yellow Pears, Sunsugars, Rainbow Cherries(?), Cherokee Purple, and....I think that may be it(???)

I have another pic to post here and I am not being allowed to do so! So there, that's not even the half of this crazy garden teeming with plant friends but I'm gonna call it a day.

A New Beer Begins

Inspired by the book, Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation by Stephen Harrod Buhner, my bro Sam and I decided to try some brewing of our own.

The herbal beer book talks about several fermented brews sacred to indigenous peoples, as well as the history of beer and how many an herb other than hops has been made into beer. It includes tons of cool quotes and recipes from way back in the day, like the 1600s.

Being in an herbalism class I was quite excited to see that one can make ales from my herb friends like elecampagne, St. John's wort, coriander, clary sage, yarrow, borage, etc. One can even make a psychotropic ale of saffron, molasses, brown sugar, water, and yeast. How interesting. (What's the cost of half an ounce of saffron though? Pricey, eh?)

To start off we figured we should probably just get the equipment and make some standard beer from a pre-packaged mix to get the gist of the process, before we add coming up with a pound or what have of you of some fresh flowering magical herb to the list of things to figure out.

We got the kit and the mix at San Francisco BrewCraft, which was really great because they actually had the herbal beer book in stock, AND the guy that was helping us out happened to be the guy that LOVED that book. He also told us about the success they had making a lavender beer. That's good to know! Conveniently and fortuitously for me, I work part time at a lavender farm. Lavender beer is definately on the agenda for the near future. I've got 7 pounds of dry culinary grade lavender just waiting to be fermented into a real good time! (We probably don't need near that much.)

Making the beer last night was really fun, although we started kinda late and I had to give up and go to bed before we were done boiling our wort with the malt and hops. Sam had to stay up and finish it off without me. I didn't get to be there for pouring the liquid over the yeast into the fermenter, but I was most likely there in spirit. I'm so excited about our beer. We are making an IPA.

The beer is alive! This pic is of the fermenter under Sam's bed. He can hear it gurgle underneath him. It's like his little baby beer:



The beer is going to hang out here in this fermenter for about 6 days and then it gets to hang out in a huge glass jar thing called a carboy to ferment some more until it is no longer cloudy (?) and then we get to put it in bottles and 10 days after that we get to drink it. Woo hoo! Maybe I will even make some beer bread with my very own beer.

Pond Friends Swap Sent Out!

These are the things I made and sent to BronzFrog in the Pond Friends Swap. The carving is actually very special to me, I made it in my wood carving class in India, but I know that BronzFrog is the right recipient for it.

I made the frog stuffie from the free frog pattern at Purl Bee. When I stuffed it I added lavender and rosemary from my garden.

The bottom of this bag is actually supposed to be a lily pad. It looks more like one from a diferent angle, but if I took the picture that way you wouldn't see the little froggie on the side.

Pond Friends Swap Received!

This is the great frog stuff I got this summer from BronzFrog, a craftster swapper, in the Pond Friends Swap. (I have been meaning to post these pics forever and a day now. Busy busy.)

Coincidentally we each made eachother frog stuffies. I love the pattern she used with it's little darts for a more sculpted frog face and frog butt. She got her free pattern at The Frog Store.

Check out my canned frog hanging out with my herbal teas! It looks like a shelf of spell components. And I love drinking tea from my frog mug, and having frog magnets.

I love everything, but I have to say my FAVORITE thing in this package are the bottlecap earrings. They rule! I feel extra festive wearing them. It was fun making stuff for and getting stuff from a fellow frog lover. Thanks BronzFrog!