Herbs and Booth

72 this morning, humid. Sunny and hot all day, but storms in the evening.

I took advantage of this sunny day and gathered herbs for drying. I don't grow a lot of herbs, mainly the culinary ones. Today I cut basil, oregano, chives and parsley. All of these dry easily. I will be making green up some Italian herb mix for Christmas gifts, and the chives will also be gifts. 

I am also drying a few onions. With so much rain, we had several that were soft around the neck, so I cut out all the bad places and now have a dehydrator almost full. Onions dry down to next to nothing so it won't make a lot, but they are nice to have on hand. I am still using the peppers I dried last year; I put some in the spaghetti I made yesterday for dinner, actually. 

I finally beat back the weed patch that the small ward garden had become. I'm afraid I might have burned up my best string trimmer doing it though. The black raspberries planted last fall are doing great despite being almost entirely covered up with that awful bindweed,  and the same is true of the asparagus plants in that patch. I swear, they all seemed to thrive on the neglect! Now I can get in there and pull the raspberry canes down so that I can put their tips in the soil to root. There are a couple currant plants in there too, which also look good. The grapes on the arbor have blighted on one side but not on the other so we may get a few grapes after all. 

After all that garden work, we loaded the van to take new things to our Ripley booth. It has been a month since we were there because we were sick, and sales show it. It was not a good 2 weeks, but that wasn't a surprise, since a small space like that needs to be kept full and fresh. I hope these next two weeks show a big improvement. Fingers crossed! Here's a look:

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