Good Morning.
It got really cold last night here in Iowa. I bet it got to about 30 degrees. So I am glad I didn't get my tomato plants in yet. This is unusual, to be this cold this late into May. It will warm up, though, hopefully soon, and I can't wait to plant my tomatoes.
Jim plants the big garden way down in the back yard. Then I have a smaller kitchen garden right outside my dining room door. In this garden, I will just have things I can run out and pick for summer meals. But out of Jim's garden, I will can tomatoes. For my kitchen garden, I will have green peppers and hot peppers. Then the beef steak tomatoes for slicing and a couple cucumber plants.
I will plant my basil in pots. But basil will not grow in cold weather. It will just sit and wait for warm weather. So I don't have this planted yet. I have the lettuce leaf basil, the lemon and the purple basil to plant. Then I will be buying my favorite ... the sweet basil. Now, the sweet basil you can get in the 10¢ seeds and they are the best seeds, I think. I plant my basil in pots ... in case the weather gets bad, I can bring the pots in on the porch. And then, too, when fall comes, I bring all the basil in and use it until about Christmas and then it's about done, or too scraggly to use anymore.
Well, I could never have a summer without basil. It's my favorite herb. In the summer, I slice up my tomatoes on a plate and use the basil as a garnish. One salad I make goes like this. I just take a quart canning jar and fill it with chunks of tomatoes, onions and green peppers. Then I add basil, rosemary and chives. You could even add mint, too. Then I put in about a fourth cup of vinegar ... about a fourth cup of sugar ... and let it all set for a while in the fridge and it is so delicious. I add salt, also, and black pepper.
Also we plant zinnias everywhere and marigolds. I make many bouquets with my flowers and I add long stems of basil and other herbs.
I have a lot of dill. I let it grow everywhere, as I love it. And I often stick this in with my bouquet of flowers. I enjoy seeing the long stemmed herbs mixed with the flowers. I use my dill for cooking before it gets tall and dry. I don't like using the seeds of it. I just use it when it first starts to grow ... before the heads start to develop.
Also in my kitchen garden I have the Seven Sister Rose bush, and lots of comfrey and other herbs. Also horseradish.
I can hardly wait to get these tomatoes and peppers in.
Another favorite herb that I like to use fresh for my iced tea in the summer is the lemon balm. I just pick this and wad it up to bruise it as I wash it good in cold water. Then I just plop it in my iced tea. You don't have to boil it ... just pick a long stem and wad it up and throw it in your tea. So I run around all summer with weeds (Jim calls them) in my glass of tea. Jim always tells me "I want just plain iced tea."
The Colonial Mothers called the herb teas Liberty Tea when they no longer bought their tea from England. "Honest Tea is the Best Policy."
PLANT LIL GROCERY STORES
I don't have the perfect garden. Land sakes, no! And the siding on our house is doin' some serious falling off. And the roof leaks still like a sieve when it rains. We have had the hole in the kitchen ceiling fixed at least twenty times. It will be fixed for a few years and then it leaks again. And the foundation of our house is awful, too. But the Lord tells me, "Connie, you just make your garden and take care of Rose and don't worry about it. Jim will take care of it."
And ya know, this is how it used to be in the old days. Many times, a man would buy a piece of land he felt that he could work to feed his family on. The family would live off the land ... then they wanted to have a cash crop, too. But the husband never looked at the house. He just looked at the land. The wife and mother was to make a home out of whatever house she got.
And Mama would get busy in the spring and plant tiger lilies around the foundation of the house to hide the crumbling foundation. She would scurry about in the spring and plant all kinds of flower gardens to make bouquets for the family table. In the winter she dried flowers upside down to give color to her little winter home. Then she was expected to plant things that come up each year. She called rhubarb plants, pie plants. She would trade seeds with the other country mothers. It was her job to plant the herb garden.As one mother was thinning out her raspberry plants, she would give the other country mothers some raspberry starts.
Mother was expected to make a house a home. To take control of her home and land and make it work. Usually the husband was too busy making a living to worry about the house fallin' in on one side.
My friend Jill and her husband moved into an old farm house about ten years ago. The back side of the house was sinking so bad, they couldn't close the back kitchen door. So they hoisted it up with rocks and then the back door closed.
The old time Mothers just made a home out of whatever they had to work with. The home wasn't made perfectly for them? They had to make it. And the Mothers would plant many perennials ... plants that come up each year. They would plant strawberries and horseradish and rhubarb and asparagus. They would start their grape arbor and plant as many fruit trees as they could. They would also plant walnut trees and other trees that bore nuts. All of these I just mentioned will come up each year.
Then, of course, they would plant their herb gardens. Herbs for cooking and for medicine. Mother planted ginger root to spice her ginger breads and cakes and to make ginger tea. She knew the names of all of the flowers and herbs and taught this to her own daughters.
Mother would forage in the woods to find wild lettuce, onions and other wild greens in the spring. See, our country used to be a lot different and the land produced many herbs and wild foods. Now, with the poisons put on our land to kill weeds, many of the wild herbs are dead. And it is not good to use this stuff, as it kills many of the health giving herbs and wild foods, like the little wild strawberries and other wild berry plants. Then the poisons sink into the ground and hurt your water supply.
We need to say the hell with the perfect yard and plant lil grocery stores in our yards. Yes, the mint will spread and take over the yard. Well, so what? Who wants grass? I would rather have a yard full of mint to mow. Think of how good it would smell to mow mint instead of grass. Mint and other herbs popping up in the grass is a good thing. It is medicine growing in your yards ... don't kill it.
During the 1930s many families lost their homes and were forced to live in the country in abandoned farm homes. Had the Mothers not known how to make a home out of nothing, the families would not have survived. In our present generation we mothers need to learn to work and prepare while the sun shines.
MAKING HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES
This spring Papa planted a cherry bush called "sugar cherry." Also a dwarf peach tree. We have several dwarf apple trees and a plum tree. All of these plants come up each year. Then plants like tomatoes and peppers and other garden vegetables just last for the season. You have to plant them each year.
But ya know, dear Mothers, the old saying is "Make hay while the sun shines." In other words, you can't bale hay to store for the winter when it's raining. Wet hay will rot and won't store well. And we need to seriously consider our ways in these troubled times. Things are hard now but, Darlin', they are gonna get harder yet. We need to put some of our money into buying fruit trees and food plants that will come up each year.
Many of you know nothing about the herbs or how to use them. Now is the time to go to the library and get books and store up knowledge. Go to book sales and buy books to have at home for a Mother's Home Library. Books on gardening and herbs and home remedies. So many people are afraid of herbs but not of the harmful drugs from the doctor. The medical profession is in serious trouble. It's time to break loose from them and find your own ways through the wisdom of God. If you need a certain herb, then learn to grow it and use it, if it is possible.
Gather canning jars this summer while the garage sales are plentiful. Buy some big pans with lids to do some serious home canning this fall.
Gather wisdom and confidence that you can make it. That if push comes to shove, you could make your own soap for laundry and baths.
The more knowledge you can store up and the more you can learn now, the better. If you have wisdom and know-how, then you don't need to be afraid of the coming hard times. Dear hearts, build your confidence now. Learn the many survival skills of housewifery. Come back to the land now and learn all you can.
My yard isn't huge but is big enough to have two gardens, four dwarf fruit trees, and many perennials. If you are in an apartment, you can store up knowledge through books for when you can move to where you have some land. You can start some tomato plants or green peppers in the big five gallon buckets. But do something to store up knowledge for the hard times that will surely come. Especially the families who plan to have many children. Of course Papa and I just have Rose now. But I want to be an example to my older children and their families. Our son Johnny (age 29 and married with our first grandson) told me while he was here visiting a few years ago, "Mom, your whole yard is a garden."
Mothers, I would just encourage you to do what you can this spring and summer to learn what you can. Maybe you can only work on making a Mother's Home Garden Library. But just do what you can and give some priority to storing knowledge and survival skills.
