You know that I love drinking tea, but did you know I make my own "tea" from my own herbs? Throughout the summer, I dry lots of herbs and use them for cooking and tea making in the winter. What I make is not technically tea because there are no tea leaves in it, but we'll just call it herbal tea to make things easy.

 

I just made a batch of Keby’s Mint Special-Tea and wanted to show you how I do it and how easy it is for anyone to do. You don't even need to have your own dried herbs since you can buy them in most markets these days. I'll show you how to make mint tea because it's easy, and the only herb you'll need is mint!

Valentine's day is a time to show appreciation for those you love. I love all my friends, and of course I love gardening. I've decided that I'm going to combine my two loves and give away seeds this February 14th! Of course, I won't just hand people a pile of seeds. Instead, I'm going to make everyone a special card to put the seeds in. Because the only thing better than getting a packet of seeds, is getting a packet of seeds and a really nice handmade card!

You probably only think of pumpkins at Halloween when you’re carving them into jack-o-lanterns, but they’re actually pretty amazing plants worthy of year-round admiration. Here are some pumpkin facts you might not have known about.

A single vine can grow as long as 30 feet. At its peak, the vine can grow as much as 6 inches a day!

One of my favorite things about camping is meeting new trees. All of the trees on our farm are my dear friends. We know everything about each other. But, in a new forest I see a whole bunch of new friends I can talk with.

Wait…why are you looking at me like that? Haven't you ever talked to a tree?

I guess I've been volunteered to tell the first campfire story of the trip. I know some people like to hear scary tales around the campfire, but I prefer telling inspiring ones.

You probably think it sounds fun to go camping for a few days with nothing but a tent and some snacks to get you through. But what if you went camping for over two years, and instead of you're tent being on the ground it was way up in the air on the highest branches of a very tall tree? Well, one girl did just that, but it wasn’t just for fun. She was trying to save the forest, and this is her true story.

DAY 5

The whole gang and I went to our local nursery and picked out plants for the new garden. We bought a lot of herbs, some flowers, a strawberry plant and even a peanut plant! (F.W. wanted that one. I’m not sure if it will be warm enough to grow peanuts, but we’ll see.) We had those plus the plants saved from the old garden to plant. With everyone pitching in we planted them in no time!

DAY 4

Before I add the soil to the garden, I want to create paths that help shape my actual planting areas. I’m going to make “wedges” in this garden, and each wedge will have a different theme. I’m going to separate each wedge by putting wood chips down. These wood chips will separate my garden beds and act as paths. Also they help cover the newspaper so I can put soil down only where I'll be planting (great compost is like a treasure and I don't want to waste any).

DAY 3

I went to my local newspaper office and asked if they have any old newspapers they would be willing to give me. Boy did they! No, I don’t want to read the same articles over and over again, I need them for the garden. And, no Ramses, I'm not planting newspaper trees. You see, to prevent the weeds from coming up again, I’m covering the entire garden bed with the papers! I'm breaking each newspaper up into its sections (arts, sports, etc.) and laying those down with the edges overlapping. Moo-Cow helped me but I kept catching him reading the paper instead of laying them out.

Day 2 

In addition to pulling weeds and raking I also moved the ring of rocks that surrounded the original garden. They had been there so long many were buried and some even had these cool looking ant colonies under them!

Remember my shade garden that I planted last fall? Well, this is what it looks like this spring!

I just raked it out, added some wood chips to prevent weeds from coming up, and watered it a few times. Aside from that I haven’t done any other maintenance and it is already starting to look so beautiful! Spring sure makes me happy!

It’s a good thing my shade garden doesn’t require a lot of work because I have a new project over at the Moo-Cow Fan Club Headquarters that is going to take up all my extra time this week.

Have you heard the legend of how tea drinking was discovered? Supposedly a few leaves from a tea plant fell into a Chinese emperor's pot of boiling water, and he decided to give it a taste. Who knows if that is actually true, but it shows that there is a long history of drinking tea in China and when we visited I couldn’t wait to learn more about it. Oh, and in Chinese the word for tea is “cha.”

What I really wanted to do when we were in China was attend a tea ceremony. You can drink tea just about anywhere, but I wanted to learn about each tea and really appreciate it. Luckily, in Shanghai we found a great one that was well worth it!

It's winter, the time of year that us gardeners usually feel sad to be separated from our gardens. But I'm never too sad because I'm never separated entirely from plants. Of course with a few feet of snow on the ground there isn't much I can do outside, but inside my nice toasty house is another story.

You too probably have a few plants inside your house right now, but did you know you don't have to limit yourself to just decorative plants? You can grow vegetables inside the house too!

Remember when I was making a border for my shade garden? Well, Moo-Cow came around and took a couple of the rocks that were too big for me to use, and hauled them off. He's always so hush hush about what he's working on that I could only wonder what he would use two big rocks for.

Here is my veggie garden a week ago. It is already much more full and is growing lots everyday (you should see the crazy pumpkins, they're everywhere!)

One of the main things you need when staring a new garden is good soil. Most people think dirt is just dirt, but an experienced gardener knows that good dirt is essential to a healthy garden. Good dirt is the true black gold!

Before I start planting in my new garden I like to figure out its boundaries. I make sure my garden is going to be clearly separate from the grassy area, or plants around it, and has a shape to it that I like. There are a lot of different ways you can do this.