Lemon balm gin smash? I’m not sure if that’s the right name.
Recipe (my first cocktail creation!)
1/2 lemon, squeezed, then cut into quarters Leaves from 2 sprigs lemon balm 3/4 oz honey syrup* 2 1/2 oz gin
Squeeze 1/2 lemon into cocktail shaker. Cut the remaining lemon rind in quarters and drop them into cocktail shaker. Add lemon balm leaves and honey syrup. Muddle until the oils from the lemon and balm are good and distributed. Add gin, then ice. Shake vigorously until very cold. Strain into chilled martini glass.
*To make honey syrup, combine equal parts honey and water in a sauce pan (1/2 cup honey 1/2 cup water). Warm and stir until honey dissolves, then cool. Store in refrigerator.
When I purchased our jug of Tanqueray at the liquor store the other day, the woman at the cash register said, “Oh, gin! What do you use gin for?”
And I thought, “Everything?”
“Martinis,” is what I blurted out. “Really cold. With big fat olives.”
Her coworker stopped what he was doing, ready to share in the joys of gin. “With just a hint of dry vermouth,” he said. I nodded.
“Tom Collins,” he continued.
“Gin sling,” I said.
And that honey grapefruit Gin Gila recipe from the Beach House album, or the Cucumber Gin Gimlet recipe from the Tennis album, both from Vinyl Me Please. Or my favorite cocktail when we eat out on summer nights, something with gin and honey and lavender, usually with “Bee” in the name.
In July, when the herb garden is out of control, the basil gin smash.
“What about appletinis? Are those gin?” the cashier asked.
I looked at her coworker. “No,” we said together.
A few days later, I was walking the garden, as I do multiple times per day. The lemon balm is flourishing, and lemon balm is one of my favorite scents on earth. I just want to bury my face in it.
I wondered, can I make a cocktail out of this? Maybe a variation on the basil gin smash? And with honey?
So I tried it tonight. It was my first attempt at creating a cocktail recipe. And omg, y’all, it was delicious. I’m not sure how much of it was the lemon balm, and how much of it was just the combination of lemon and honey, but I don’t really care. Whatever it was, it worked. It went down way too easily. I have to actively stop myself from having another.
Thanks to conversations at work today, I have a lot more lemon balm experiments to try. Some with gin, some with bourbon.
Summer is the best season. Especially when you have a garden full of herbs and flowers for cocktails.
A friend asked recently what it is about gardening that I love so much, and with such intensity. What is so compelling? What do I get out of it?
When we moved into our house, it was surrounded by nothing but mowed grass. A vast expanse of green blades, all the same height, all the same color. No flowers. No birds. No butterflies. It was uninteresting. When I’d go out on our back deck, there was nothing to watch except the clouds. Though the grass itself was living, the landscape didn’t feel alive.
What I love with intensity is life. Life is miraculous to me. I grew two human beings in my body who are now teenagers. Fifteen years ago they didn’t exist. They were nothing. Now, they walk and run and talk and laugh, they think, they create, they have ideas. They’re baking cakes and learning Spanish and riding bikes and swimming 3 miles a day. That’s amazing! It blows my mind.
What I love with intensity is beauty. When I look at a flower — the arrangement of petals, the colors, the shape of the flower to attract the right pollinators — I could get lost in it. When I look at a garden, or when I work in the garden, I do get lost in it. Digging a hole for a plant unearths a worm, which makes me think of the subterranean world, and all the underground activity happening to create the soil for my flowers. Filling in the hole, and knowing the soil is loose now, makes me think about the robin that will soon be along to take advantage of that loose earth to find the worm. And then I’ll think about how funny robins are, hopping around in the garden, with worms wiggling in their beaks. The next thing I know I’ve been in the garden digging holes for 4 hours.
That’s beautiful to me. The beauty of the connectedness of all life. That’s not the beauty I was originally talking about, though. I was really just talking about superficial beauty, of different flower colors, petal shapes, leaf shapes, leaf colors. The beauty of the curved contours of the flower bed, of the Chartreuse green of spring, of the red of the male cardinal, the yellow of the goldfinch, the deep blue of the indigo bunting, the black and white check of the woodpecker.
Which brings me to what is most compelling to me about gardening, and about why I continue to replace lawn with flower beds: I love with intensity is how diverse life is. An expanse of bright green, freshly mowed grass bores me if that’s the only thing there. An expanse of bright green, freshly mowed grass is lovely when it provides a clean backdrop for pink roses, purple Salvia, magenta butterfly bush, yellow sunflowers.
Those plants, when they’re growing in the spring, provide daily absorption for me: how much did they grow? How many leaves do they have? Are there any flower buds yet? I walk the garden every day inspecting for all of those things. When they start flowering, the insects come: fat fuzzy bumblebees; yellow, orange, white, and blue butterflies; honeybees and moths; caterpillars and ladybugs, aphids and aphid-eaters. And the hummingbirds! I’ve already seen a hummingbird this year. All those insects attract birds, and when the flowers go to seed, even more birds come. My favorites are the goldfinches that sit atop the dried seed heads of purple coneflowers in late summer. The long stems nod under the goldfinches weight, but remain upright.
What I get out of my garden is that it invites diversity to come back. It creates a space where I can continually be struck by the wonder and connectedness of life on earth. Not only did life once not exist at all on this planet, but it didn’t exist, and then it did, and then it turned into millions of species who are dependent on one another for survival.
I didn’t think about that or experience it on a daily basis when our lawn was just lawn. Now, as I sit and write this, I look at the pansies in our flower boxes and wonder at the arrangement of the petals, and what advantage that might create for the continued survival of that species. I think about the curly leaves of the purple kale and marvel at their water-funneling capability. I hear the calls of multiple bird species. I see bees buzzing. I eagerly await the warmth of the day, when the butterflies start arriving.
Each year since we moved into our house and I killed all the grass, I take a week off around the time of our kids’ spring break to fertilize, mulch, and dedicate myself 100% to getting the garden ready for warm weather and flowers. This year, that week starts today.
Originally I was going to take last week, but the timing was super awkward with my new job. I would have worked for one week at Support Driven, then taken a week off. Also, last week was very cold, and I would have had to dig the garden out from under snow. That is not how I want to spend my fun, spring-time gardening vacation.
By taking this week instead, I was able to get a solid two weeks of foundation in at SD. I had a productive two weeks of writing, wrangling, and strategizing before my giant piles of mulch were delivered on Thursday. Now, though I know there’s still a ton of work to be done to get ready for our Expo in June, I also know it’s in good hands with my coworkers and the amazing volunteers running things. I can hit the ground running again when I return.
Plus, I haven’t had time off since a quick four-day weekend on the Chesapeake in October. I’m desperate for a break. I’ve hardly taken any of the holidays off, except Christmas day and a couple of days at Thanksgiving, which we hosted, so it wasn’t truly a break. My brain is tired, and my body needs to be outside.
Right now there’s frost on the ground. The grass is a sparkling silver-green, and the mulch is like snow-dusted mountains. I’m drinking my coffee, listening to birds chirp. Robins hop around, looking for worms. They are going to be delighted today when I start digging up plants. They will feast on unearthed squirmy things.
A herd of ten deer is walking up the middle of our neighborhood lane as the sun rises. They live in the woods across the street. They’ve eaten all of my tulips.
I fear for my plants. The rabbits will chow down as well.
The weather is still not supposed to be as warm as I’d like it to be. It’s early yet in the year. But I don’t care anymore. I’ve got sweatshirts. For now, I’m just biding my time, waiting for the sun to get a little higher. For now, I’ll make lists of what I’m going to do first, what I’m going to move where, what I need to buy.
For now, I’ll sip my coffee in our silent house and watch the deer and the robins. I’m on vacation.
March is lioning. Wind howled through the night on March 1st. It shook the house, rattled the windows, scoured the lawn of leftover leaf detritus from winter.
Now, Saturday morning, with a cat on my writing arm, I look out the window and see a red cardinal and tiny house finches perched on the bare branches of the oak, in the slant of morning sun, looking for the feeder we took down so it wouldn’t become a missile in the 60 mph wind gusts. Soft grey doves bob their heads searching for seeds on the ground. The birds twitter and chirp, awaiting their breakfast. It looks warm out there, but it’s not.
A couple of weeks ago, spring teased. For more than a week in February, highs were in the 60s and 70s. I took advantage of the weather. On lunch breaks and between swim meet sessions, I put on my garden gloves and hat, dragged the hose from out front to out back, and grabbed a shovel to dig holes in the new beds I cleared at the top of the hill.
As hopeful as I was that winter was finished, I reluctantly allowed myself the possibility that it was not. I wanted to start transplanting everything I knew I wanted to move: bee balm, Shasta daisies, Rudbeckia; hydrangea, Echinacea, lilac. I really didn’t want any of those to die at my hands because I had moved them too early. So instead I moved a few testers — plants that might not survive anyway (rosemary), and a few that if they did survive, great!, but if not, that’s fine too (mums). I sowed some seeds as well — chamomile, feverfew, Texas bluebonnets I bought on my trip to Arizona with my girlfriends. The packets said to sow when the ground was workable (not frozen) in spring.
I hope the seeds didn’t blow away.
Even though I knew it could get cold again, and the work I did could be destroyed, I’m bummed by the setback. Highs are not in the 70s anymore, and more depressingly, lows are in the 20s for the next week. The wind still gusts as I write, and this is the first weekend in ages that I have free time and had hopes for finally getting into the garden. It’s March! The month I’ve been waiting for! Spring!
It’s supposed to get into the 40s today. I can at least walk the garden looking for frost damage on emerging leaves and flower buds. Tomorrow it will get into the 50s, then drop into the 20s at night. I’m tempted to move the blueberry bushes and maybe a couple other things I want to move around. I’m just not sure if it’s smart to do that when I know temperatures will drop at night (I’m guessing it’s not).
This feels like the longest winter. I have no idea how we survived Minnesota. I’m done with the lion. I’m ready for the lamb.
I am out of control. Once Christmas ended, and the holiday decorations were all stored and put away in the cubby hole under the stairs, and winter became plain old winter with nothing left to look forward to in it, my mind switched gears to gardening.
Yep. Gardening. In January.
Two years ago, I embarked on a grass-killing spree in our front yard. I converted about 1000 square feet of lawn into flower beds. This past year, I set my eyes on the giant hill out back, the one that makes me feel like I’m going to have a heart attack every time I mow it. I determined to convert that to flower beds as well, and every time I pushed the mower up the hill, or along the hill, or tried to keep the mower from pulling me down the hill, I cursed the grass and dreamed of the day we would never have to mow it again.
Dead grass out back. No more mowing. Yes more butterflies… if winter would ever end.
In November, I killed it. I killed it dead. Seeing all that dry yellow that we’ll no longer have to mow makes me ridiculously happy. In fact, I’m going to expand it because I don’t like the shape, and I messed up the curve down there at the bottom, and what the hell, I just spent $50 on seeds, and an expanded swath of dead grass means less to mow and more room for flowers.
This is where the crazy comes in. Since the beginning of January, when I’m not at work, I think of nothing but gardening. I scour Pinterest for planting combinations. I measured all the beds on a day last week when the temperatures finally broke freezing. I scribble notes in my gardening-specific composition book. I check my gardening-specific blog for when things happened last year, jot notes down in my gardening-specific calendar, and draw plans in my gardening-specific graph-paper notebook. I even created a spreadsheet with all of our current plants, the seeds I ordered, and when to plant and where.
In my sweaters and fuzzy slippers, sipping coffee, I walk from window to window, staring out, studying the spaces, thinking about what we already have that I can transplant to another part of the garden, thinking about what new plants I want to buy, considering color and height, reminding myself of the budget, moving another choice from the “buy at the nursery” to the “start from seed” column, checking to see if my on-paper plans will scale to the real landscape, visualizing. Dreaming about what it’s going to look like when everything fills in. I’ve probably worn the paint off the gardening section of the bookshelf, pulling Essential Perennials for Every Garden and Gardening for Birds, Butterflies, & Bees nearly every day to check, “What was that purple plant I liked?”, “What were those native grasses?”, “What will look good with the bee balm? The yarrow?”
I. Just. Can’t. Stop.
I thought I had gotten to a stopping point yesterday. On Friday I spent about 6 hours, and on Saturday about 10 hours, sketching real-deal, true to scale, plans for both the front and the back: about 2000 square feet of butterfly and bird garden.
Once the plans were set, I ordered seeds and made month-by-month purchase lists in Trello so we’ll make sure to budget the right amount each month.
And I was SO PLEASED! I thought maybe I’d stop thinking about it all. I thought my brain would be free to consider other things, like blogging or our children. And it kind of was, for a minute.
Now I want to just finish this post so I can look up shrubs that might do well on the side of the house where they get blasted by wind, and I want to think about the mailbox bed which I neglected to think about in all the thinking about the bigger gardens. Even though the plans are finally made, I keep doing all the same things I was before, only this time with plans in hand. I hold the back hill plan up against the sliding glass door while I look out at the bird feeder and think, hmmm, will that plant actually work where I think it will? (No.) Then I want to redraw everything, or note alternative plants in case the nursery doesn’t have the one I want.
The good news is that I’ve transitioned from “The amount of space to plant is overwhelming there’s no way I can do this!” to an actual plan, with dates of when to do what. I’ve already put in vacation time for my annual gardening week.
I’m very antsy to get started. I want to clean out all the old brush. I want to kill more grass. I want to learn when and how to prune the roses, how much to cut back the rue, what to do with the forsythia when it blooms. I want to start seeds, and move perennials, and see if I can successfully transplant the milkweed. But it’s only January 14! Only 3 weeks past the winter solstice! I can’t believe I have to wait a whole two months to start doing anything.
I don’t want to wish my life away. But I am. Just these two months. I wish winter were almost over so I could stop thinking and start doing.
This is my contribution to the daily challenge, entertain, as the garden seems to entertain me no matter what time of year it is, even if it also makes me crazy.
I’m going on vacation today, and one of the things I’m most excited about is that I’ll have free time over the next few days to write, and to play with my blog(s). Before heading out of town, I opened my laptop to add my other sites to the menu here on Butterfly Mind, and as I added them, I realized I have five blogs. Five.
If you’re interested in sailing, gardening, words, or American literature, I’ve got blogs for you! While Butterfly Mind is the place where I share whatever thoughts alight on my screen or notebook pages, these other blogs chronicle journeys on the water, on the land, and in books:
Andrea Sails: these are the logs of our adventures on the water. The entries help me keep track of what I’m learning as I venture into this new-to-me world of wind- and human-powered boating.
Andrea’s Gardening Blog: this site is often the result of me blogging with dirt on my hands, from my phone, in the garden, right after I’ve put plants in the ground. I love having a searchable record as each month comes around where I can take a look to see what the garden was doing this time last year: what was blooming? How has everything grown since then? When did I sow those seeds?
Andrea’s Lexicon: these are words I collect that I think are cool. Sometimes I hear them in conversation, sometimes I find them in books. Most of them appeal to me because they’re fun to say. Haberdasher! See what I mean?
Andrea Reads America: this is the chronicle of my journey through the US in literature in three books per state. The three books must be set in the state and be written by an author who is from the state or who has lived in the state. For each state I am reading men, women, and non-Caucasian authors. I’m going in alphabetical order. I’m reading Michigan now, though I still need to write up my Massachusetts reads.
Alright, time for me to hit the road. I’m going to have a hard time deciding which one(s) of these to write for while I’m gone.
Butterfly Mind 