it's permissible to see
Everbearing strawberries I bought last week or so and a flat of 4” herb plants.
Will be potting up the herbs & planting some in the garden today and creating a strawberry tower in an old half barrel I’ve got out front in order to try to fool the chipmunks this year. Have to dig up the few remaining plants in the old strawberry bed which was apparently perfectly placed for the chipmunks who felt safe & totally comfortable eating EVERY DAMNED STRAWBERRY that ever ripened. Bastards. :/
The lovely mint in the front there is Orange Mint. Not quite sure if it’s hardy here in Michigan but I’m going to grow it in a container anyway. I’ll dump it out and bury it somewhere in the fall and see if it comes up next year.
Don’t let me forget to buy a cute fancy thyme to plant in a special pot I bought guys. OK? OK :)
Some things I found on my aged chicken litter compost pile when I was shoveling up some buckets to amend my garlic planting bed today.
Couple of tomatoes from the volunteer plants that came up in the pile and a nice large mullein plant with its roots to either dry or tincture w/glycerine :)
Lotions and Creams – Body Butter
There are many types of creams and lotions. Some are water, or oil based, or the combination of both. All herbal preparations for topical application specifically treat the skin. Similiarly to making the salve body butter is made by merging different types of oils that have different solidity. Body butter is a decadent medium of silky self-care. It is not a water based lotion, and has a thick but light body at the same time. I doubled the batch in order to make two separate butters: 1) Lemongrass and lemon and 2) Yang lang.
I’m going to make some of these this winter w/my own infused oils and essential oil blends. Only difference is that I plan to chill them before whipping them as I saw in a blog post online (speeds up the whipping process from what I understand)
My body of herbal work from yesterday.
(in the photo top left) On the left are herbs I grew in my garden and dried. Angelica, Sage (2 kinds) English & French Lavender, Lemon Verbena and also wild yarrow that I collected around my property.
In the middle are some herbal infused oils for different salves, lip balms, and also going to try to make a solid or semi solid herbal deodorant.
On the right are four herbal tinctures that will be brewing for the next month or so. Feverfew, yellow dock root, mullein root and mullein leaves. These are crafted from Everclear (grain alcohol) and fresh herbs & roots. I harvested all of them as “weeds” ~ the feverfew volunteers from compost in all of my raised vegetable beds which I’m cleaning out. The mullein plants I also pulled from the vegetable beds and the yellow dock was growing beside one raised bed and also next to a new bed where I had planted potatoes
The photo on the right is a basket of dried herbs that I stored in the jars (I strip the leaves off the stems and use the stems to infuse oils), bottom left is the yellow dock root and bottom right is a basket of feverfew tops and whole mullein plants that are now being brewed into tincture along with the yellow dock root.
