Health & Wellness Investigations

When I was planting my herb garden a couple of weeks ago, there happened to be big rhubarb plant for a good price that I just had  to get. After all, I have fond childhood memories of eating my grandma's strawberry rhubarb cobbler and had visions of making the same cobbler with strawberries and rhubarb fresh from my garden....so I got the rhubarb But alas, you can't harvest rhubarb until it's 2nd year, so it's sitting in my garden sucking up tons of water and tempting me with it's red stalks that I know I'm not supposed to pick until next summer. Thankfully, the local farm market was selling big bundles of rhubarb this past Saturday. Not so thankfully, when I called my mom for the rhubarb cobbler recipe, she informed me that my Grandma hadn't written it down and so - since my Grandma is long passed away - it was lost in family history...which explained why I didn't remember having it since I was a child. Well, crud. I set to comparing a wh...

As a kid, I loved summer and fall, but as far as I was concerned, winter stopped being fun after about a month and spring was an evil that was unfortunately necessary to get summer back. This opinion didn’t really change when I grew up - summer had sunshine and swimming and fishing, fall had cider mills and my birthday, and December had Christmas and playing in the new snow, but the rest of the year? Blegh. But now that I have begun to embrace a more natural, seasonal way of life...I love all four of the seasons, even rainy, inconsistent spring. Summer is still full of sunshine and outdoor hobbies, of course. Now as an adult, I have the added bonus of being a schoolteacher, with two months of the summer off to focus on my garden and improving my house. Autumn still has cider mills and my birthday, but now it’s also a time of harvest and preservation, and preparing for the winter. Although a lot of work (and the time that school starts again…), it is exciting and as beautiful ...

Where I live, you’re not really supposed to plant your garden until Memorial Day weekend. Buuuuttt….I had planting part one on Mother’s Day! The extent of my gardening experience is a couple of cacti indoors and a pot of jalapeno plants last summer, so I was super excited to start! My main focus is going to be herbs, since I love to cook...and spices are freaking expensive. I mean, seriously. Why are spices so expensive? In my region, I can grow thyme, oregano, chives, and sage as perennials, so those were a must-plant. I also use tons of fresh basil in the summer, so that was a must as well. I also had (well, still have) a list of about 25 different weird herbs that I want because herbs are cool. I may have googled “unusual herbs” and written down everything. Y’know, just maybe. Anyway, for Mother’s Day I took my mom out to a fancy nursery near where she lives, and ended up buying $90 worth of plants.  Don’t worry, those weren’t all culinary herbs. I spent ju...

Hello! May has been incredibly busy, as I am trying to put in my first vegetable garden, work on my kitchen remodel, go to work (SIX WEEKS UNTIL SUMMER BREAK!), and worry about my new kitty who gets into everything, including cupboards and drawers. One thing that has gotten neglected is the whole cutting-the-grass things...which gave the gobs of dandelions plenty of time to flower! I was picking dandelion leaves to go in my salads all spring, and one warm day when I got home to work, I saw a sea of yellow flowers. My yard backs up to an empty field, so most of my neighbors have sort of given up the weed battle - although a few spend hours working on their carpet-like manicured lawns. Personally, I think manicured lawns are boring. They’re pretty enough, I guess, with the lush green grass...but do you know what I think is prettier? A field full of wildflowers. EDIBLE wildflowers, like dandelion, clover, and violets. I probably don’t belong in the suburbs. But for now I’ll ju...