birdsandtrees

Herbs, Herbs, Herbs...and some Blueberry Lemonade

At the beginning of summer, I mentioned to our friend/neighbor that I would eventually love an herb box right outside our kitchen door.  About two days later, he told me he had built it and was ready to hang it!!  Talk about a good neighbor!  

James and I have been looking for ways to use the herbs, and I came across this recipe for Blueberry Lemonade on Pinterest (my latest obsession), which uses some mint. 

I'm always looking for some new drink recipes in the summer, and this one was delicious!

Add some strawberry slices and I think this would be great for the 4th of July weekend. 

Need ideas for how to use your herbs?  Check out some of these:

- use some herbs in cocktails (you might have seen this in Southern Living)

- basil pesto (we've already made one batch!)

 - grilled artichokes with creamy mint sauce

- of course Martha has plenty of ideas

G is for Garden

It's that time again!  Every spring I look forward to tweaking, adding, and subtracting to our yard and garden.  This year it's a bit different, since we may be moving.  I'm really just going to do our small school garden and keep that going these next few months.  Our back yard is pretty big, so it's nice to think about just focusing on one little area! 

Today we planted a bunch of white and pink zinnia seeds and will later add some poppies and any other flowers I can fit in there.  The past few years we've done a vegetable garden, but by the time the veggies are ready for picking, it's the middle of the summer!  So this year we're doing a small cutting-flower garden.  All flowers we can just enjoy in the garden or cut and bring inside to make an arrangement.  I'm hoping we'll have some ready for the first day of May!   

PS...TJ Maxx has a line right now of watering cans (that's where I got mine in the photos above) from the London Museum, Victoria & Albert.  Such fun designs - and only $12!

Just because.

It seemed like everyone in our neighborhood was out working in their yard this weekend, including us.  James and I were busy weeding, planting, digging, weeding, more weeding (I think I picked one that was almost as tall as I am) and then some planting.  I'm still sore from it all.  But it's the good kind of sore, if you know what I mean.  There's something about working in your yard that feels really good. 
    I've been reading Tasha Tudor's Garden, and somewhere in there she says that it takes about 12 years for a garden to be complete.  That number kind of startled me, but I can see what she's talking about.  We've been living at this same house for almost 5 years, and sometimes it seems like we haven't made that much headway when it comes to gardening or landscaping.  But I have to remind myself that we do a little bit each year, always adding, sometimes subtracting, but always something.  I want it to be this thing that happens over a weekend, where- bam!- it's done and it's perfect.  Layers, color, texture, fullness...but that hasn't quite happened yet over here.  And I'm okay with that.    I think I would overwhelm myself if I tried to do everything- starting small, starting somewhere is what works for me right now.
    Our backyard is pretty much all shade- I felt like I had to pass up all the beautiful flowers at the plant sale that required full sun (although I couldn't help myself when it came to the dahlia pictured above...I had to find some sunny spot in our front yard for that).  But I've been really inspired by some shade gardens I've seen in magazines and blogs...especially this one.   And I cut out these pages from the 2005 spring/summer issue of Domino and dream of a day when I've got a garden like this:   

 

Now I'm not sure if we could really do that in a weekend, but it's nice to dream. 

Last thing- if you're looking for any good gardening blogs/websites, these are always my go-to sites:
- You Grow Girl
- Martha's gardening page, of course

If you have any other good ones, let me know!

Happy gardening!

The Garden and a Butterfly

This week at school (which  meets at my house, or in my basement to be exact) we've begun planting our vegetable garden (tomatoes, beans, lots of different kinds of peppers) and flower garden (from the zinnia and cosmo seeds we started weeks ago).  I have been waiting and waiting for the "safe" time to plant, and it was really hard to wait.  But it's been great to get in the soil and get just get dirty. 

 

We also read the book, The Gardener, by Sarah Stewart (which is weird because I have a friend named Sarah Stewart, but unfortunately she didn't write this book).  If you haven't read this book, you need to.  It's that simple.  It's one of my favorite children's books (along with one of her other books, The Library).  It's the story of girl, Lydia Grace, who moves in with her Uncle Jim and begins planting a garden in a secret place that she found, hoping she can make her uncle smile.  So, so good. 

Since this is basically a post about things we've been doing at school this week, I also wanted to share a couple of pictures from yesterday.  I ordered a caterpillar kit from this website a month or so ago (you can order them anytime of the year).  We've been watching them grow into caterpillars, make their chrysalis, and then emerge as a butterfly.  It was something I think I'll do every year from now on, with school kids and with my own kids one day.  Yesterday was the day we let them free.  And it was awesome.  Such a fun thing to see them fly out of the net and begin their journey outside of our classroom.  The last butterfly was a little stubborn, but he gave everyone in the class a chance to hold him, which was just icing on the cake. 

Dear Spring,

I'm really glad you're here.
Your friend,
Stephanie

Need an easy (and cheap) project to do with your kids (or just for you)?  If you do, crack some eggs, buy some seeds, and start planting!  We planted some zinnia's and cosmo's this week at school.  I found information on starting seeds in eggshells here and here.  After you plant them, put them on a windowsill and wait!

Day 6

from our school garden...happy monday!

from the garden

This afternoon I went to check on our (neglected) garden. 
Here's what's growing:
some tomatoes,
zucchini on its way,
and the first sunflower!
I also had some help from Maggie, who took climbing over this border very seriously. 

Happy Earth Day!

I think in honor of Earth Day, our tomato plant decided to give us a little present....

Can you see it?  A baby tomato has been born.
Welcome to the world, little buddy.