Minty Dreams

Fresh mint (Photo credit: kali.ma)

Been out planting today for the first time. Put in carrot, radish and lettuce seeds since the pea seeds haven't arrived yet (come on Mr. Postman) Planting makes me think about fresh herb season. I am hoping to get a little herb area all neatly squared away this year, including even the more boisterous and potentially invasive folks. Mint for instance. Growing up I wasn't sure what to do with mint...short of drying it for tea. Now I use it for all kinds of things. I chop it and cook with it for Mediterranean flavor when I am feeling a little Greek, I add it to water bottles, I snip it over ice cream, I put it into yogurt with nuts and honey and I throw it in salads for a little wake up pep. Its a great herb. One thing I've never tried is the recipe suggested by Marta and Krysia on their blog, "What Should I Eat For Breakfast Today. Please click over if you want to see the most delicious mug of cocoa ever made. Wow. Slobber.

The idea of fresh mint in cocoa makes me think of one of my favorite candies, After Eight mints. I never buy them, except to put on the pillows of guests (when I think of it) but they feel like decadent little treats that are just a wonderful use of sugar to me. Think the the York Peppermint Patty gone upscale and delicate. I realize the idea of hot chocolate with fresh mint sounds oxymoronic since we're talking summertime but why can't I make iced chocolate like we do with coffee? Or for that matter, iced mint coffee? Yum!

Am also very interested in making up a recipe of this minty hair rinse. I've been thinking for a long time that I'd like to whip up a vinegar based rinse because of all the good things I've read it can do for your locks. Mint in the summer shower plus an excuse to try a shine enhancing rinse sounds like the perfect plan to me.

Check out this minty top from River of Romansk's  swoony Etsy shop and then this  sweet little dress from Modcloth in soft, shades of green. Either would be the perfect pregnant but still pretty Easter outfit for a mommy, topped off  with a pair of chocolate brown leggings and some little ballet flats. *sigh* 

Maybe this summer we'll even finally get around to making our own mint ice cream from scratch. There's always hope that the mint patch will get a little out of control and need a firm hand which brings in sheaves of bright smelling leaves, that's the sort of problem I can deal with.

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Books and Birds and Buds

There is a pair of hawks swooping around our block lately. They shriek together while they soar high over the convent next door and in the morning I often watch them preening in the tops of the very tall maples across the street. I stand in tadasana and then swan dive down towards my yoga mat while they shift and ruffle feathers and the wind silently blows their tails in chill flutters. I hope they will decide to nest nearby. I'd love to see a nesting pair of hawks raise their young. I've never seen birds so big so familiarly. And maybe the local feral rabbit count will go down too which could be good for my vegetable garden, eh?

I am slowly getting bits and bobs of the house together. Today I moved some of the rugs and art work around and yesterday I figured out how to hang a mask I wanted to display. It's all stop and go and a painfully slow process but I feel like at least the motion is forward. And I know that soon...I'll be all outdoors minded and it will be all that I can do just to make myself wash the dishes, hang the rest of the house.

View into the sunroom/studio

Ru and I are reading aloud the rest of The Little House books again...we have worked our way through the first two and are beginning the third and A is reading Farmer Boy at night. I am not sure why I use the phrase "work through" the right label is "burned through" or "tore explosively through" or some other wildly manic phraseology. It is all I can do to keep the reading sessions down to an hour at a time. He's so thrilled to listen that he will beg and beg for it continue no matter where I leave off. If only I didn't want to sit there reading all day long myself. Heh. I don't know where he gets it.

The last of our snow, in that little sloping pile behind Dee.

The latest garden plan at the moment is a standard, tree-form wisteria. I was ready to give up the wisteria dream. All garden types say it is absurdly invasive and no matter the heartbreaking beauty of the plant it is evil and it will send four million runners all over your lawn and worm a thousand robust fingers up your gutters and then beginning to tear lustily at your siding.

Promising looking buds on our forsythia!

Yes, but I do love it and I have dreamed of having wisteria for years and years and A says I shouldn't live so safely. Claim a dream. I'm thinking that the grafted tree form varieties I've read about seem safer...less prone to runners and wildly unkempt habits than their vining relatives. How does this one look? The next question is: "Do I have to keep it in a planter in order to survive co-habitation with said plant? I wouldn't put mint in the ground to save my life...am I insane to consider plunking a wisteria down?

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