Connecticut Harvest

Early on in this blog, I got some complaints from some of you who shall remain nameless that I was spending too much time on the garden. Now I think I'm not spending enough time on it!! Summer has been hot this year, sometimes oppressively so. Deer are hungry and we have been under attack from all sides! Our neighbor feeds the little cuties, and that makes matters even worse. They eat her grain then come over to our yard for dessert.

Someday I'm going to make a list of all the plants that deer simply won't eat - and when I do, you will find many herbs on that list. So we usually get a good crop of herbs, and since some of them have nice flowers, well, that's nice too. I harvested the basket in the picture today - there is tarragon, basil, fennel seeds, calendula, yarrow and nasturtium flowers. It's time to make flavored vinegars which I will use all winter. Here are some combinations that are my favorites: mint/dill/garlic in cider vinegar (my mom always made this); tarragon/lemon peel in white wine or rice vinegar; fennel seed/clove/orange peel in red wine vinegar. Just pop the herbs into a big enough bottle and cover with vinegar, store in a cool place for a few weeks, and its ready to use. You can use as-is or re-bottle some with just a sprig of the herb/fruit in the new bottle to give to friends. Its fun to play around with them.

Calendula and nasturtium are nice flowers to put into salads. Yarrow is an interesting plant. I've always loved the smell of it, which reminds me of bay leaves. It has a reputation as a medicinal herb for stanching bleeding and healing wounds. It is said that Achilles used it to stop his soldiers' wounds from bleeding - hence its genus, Achillea. I also read somewhere that the Chinese used the very straight stems from yarrow plants to make sticks to cast the I Ching.