My fiddling in the flower beds is never done. These past two days, though, rain has forced me indoors to watch the garden instead of work in it. I went out today between showers to get some photos.
I spent last week’s daylight hours almost exclusively outside. I drank my morning coffee indoors, then put on my gardening gloves and hat and spent the days digging, carting, planting, and shoveling. I calculated on my gardening blog that I spread more than 2 tons of mulch in about 3 days. I was exhausted by the end of the week, but now everything is so pretty I can’t help but just stand at the windows (it’s raining) and admire all the plants that are about to burst into bloom. I ventured out into the drizzle today to capture these early buds and blossoms.
These photos aren’t great due to low light, but I want to preserve them here so I can see where everything was this time of year when I look back at my blog next year :-).
And just because I’m proud of the work I did last week, here are before and after photos for the mulching, from my April 10: Two tons of mulch spread. And I got a spicebush post on my gardening blog.
As is often the case on weekends, I’m at the competition pool. The roads are sheets of gray sleet, tree branches and the black iron railing outside the aquatic center are topped with a line of white snow, and the aqua pool below is splashing with kids warming up.
We weren’t sure if the meet would happen today because of the winter storm, but plows are out in force — we passed about six vehicles on the highway, four or five of which were plows — and here we are. I’m timing today, and I didn’t think to bring anything to entertain myself during warmups. So as is often the case in winter, I’m daydreaming about the garden.
We have a family budget meeting later this month, so I’m sitting in the bleachers, switching between the Pinterest and Trello apps on my phone, putting together a garden while kids swim butterfly in the blue lanes below me.
My gardening blog has been a huge help with timing of when different plants started showing up at the nursery last year. I had no idea it would be so useful. I’ll have to make sure to keep it up again this year.
Now I just need it to be April.
Last winter I obsessed over the garden. I scoured seed catalogs, bought graph paper to design flower beds, stood at the back door staring at the bare hill and tried to visualize what it would look like with plants on it.
Now that everything is dead and gardening season is over, I wanted to take a look at the gardens’ transformation through the months.
Back garden
Front bed
Now I can study these photos all winter to see where I want to change things. I’ve already got a seed catalog stashed away for a snowy day.
The garden is is peak bloom right now. Pollinators buzz busily, and the bigger butterflies are starting to find their way to the flowers I planted for them.
These are mostly just the close-ups. I published more photos on Andrea’s Gardening Blog if you like photographs of gardens and flowers.
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.
Butterfly Mind 