Debi: Herbal Malady

I have a little bit of a mint problem.

This house, like many houses in my part of town, has a small, fenced in back yard that includes a garden. The former owners were impeccable gardeners and clearly did a lot of planning so that perennials continued to flower throughout the growing season. They also must have really, REALLY liked mint, and all things mint-like, and all of mint's cousins and uncles and step-brothers. All the pictures above are mint-family-members growing in my garden. There are two more varieties not pictured above, including my favorite, a spearmint which actually grows in the alley outside my yard and, because of a crack under the fence, along the perimeter of my backyard patio.

Two of the mint family members above are actually oregano, which -- who knew? -- is actually a type of mint. One of the oregano brothers here is delicious and makes for great pizza sauce and soup, and the other is bitter and probably should be dug up and treated like a weed. One of the mint varieties above is also a little bitter, but, paired with that purple feathery-looking mint dame in the last picture, makes a wonderful tea. That purple gal is called Anise Hyssop (also a mint! will they never stop?!), a licorice mint that makes that whole area of the garden smell like a candy store.

When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Milwaukee, my mother had an absolutely spectacular garden that she loved dearly, protected from area deer by a tall chicken-wire fence. I remember the wonder of eating sugar snap peas right off the vine, warm from the sun. I remember wrinkling my nose in disgust at the spinach she insisted was wonderful, too. That said, I hated the work of that garden and, when I bought my first home, never planned to do more than plant a pot of tomatoes, maybe. Now that I'm here, and there is mint as far as the eye can see, I can't bear to throw it out. I take care of it, harvest it, dry it, share it with friends, leave bouquets of it on front porches, beg friends to dig up plants for their own gardens. I am my mints' pimp!

Oh, yeah, and did I mention? I've added more to the herbal insanity:

Debi: Rebirth in the City

Spring comes slowly everywhere, I think. Depending on how frustrated you've been with the weather -- and probably none this year more so than Stori! -- the baby steps that bring in spring weather can be excruciating. Here in Evanston, we've had several days over sixty degrees that were then followed with snow, or a week of sub-freezing weather. The slow striptease of green here is enough to fill my back foyer with mountains of clothes. A week's weather can require rain gear one day, light jackets another, then winter coats and mittens, and then back to the light jackets for another day. Never do we check the weather report more often than in March and April.

The nice thing about it is that our walk to school is now conducted at least partially with our heads down, searching for those first signs of flowers. That photo on top is of some fiesty tulips pushing their way through the dead grasses and leaves from last fall. I'm a fits-and-starts gardener, and while I was diligent about raking and pruning for some of the fall, eventually I got so far behind that I just decided to call the fruits of my laziness "compost." The tulips clearly didn't suffer. Our back yard is a beautiful garden left to me by the former owners of our house, who lovingly shaped it, only to leave it to someone who fought yardwork her whole childhood, only grudgingly raking or digging when absolutely ordered to do so.

Now the garden belongs to me, and I feel more inspired by it. I've managed to discover some wonderful herbs growing there -- peppermint, spearmint, anise hyssop, oregano, and chives -- and last summer added basil, thyme, dill, and two ill-fated rosemary plants. I've asked my family to dedicate a day on Mother's Day weekend to planting our annuals, which I mostly put in pots that hang around the fences and porch railings. For now, we're enjoying all the buds, including these that we lovingly admired this weekend as I raked what I ignored last fall:
Our neighbors have beautiful things happening too, but they come and go with the cold. These flowers were glorious on our walk to school one day, but closed up and huddled against the cold on our way home:

It's going to get spectacular around here any day now...I can feel it!