the fruits of our labors

Well, that title is probably a bit dramatic but still fitting in my mind. Anyway, I've really been enjoying our "urban garden" this year. We have two containers near our front doors which "pep up" the rust colored door (below). I've also had fun refilling the containers we had last year on our back patio (right), and adding a few more. These pictures were also on Facebook in case you feel like you're seeing duplicates.





My favorite of the flower containers on the back patio is this one containing cat mint - purple breezy looking flowers in the middle, violas pale yellow, snapdragons (not blooming when I took this picture) also pale yellow, and the fuzzy plants that are whitish and just make a nice addition. One of my friends described it as having "wild beauty" I'd agree with such a lovely description. (The watering can is also charming I think... a great $6 Big Lots find!)


We've also endeavored to plant some additional garden areas near our apartment. I found $1 boxes of wildflower seeds at Walgreens recently and decided to invest in two of them. After raking up the dirt and adding some topsoil Matt covered up the seeds I sprinkled in. We've been watering and are thrilled to see sprouts coming up. I'll be so excited if there really are wildflowers under the formerly bare stairwells in our complex. I hope the Seminary would be equally thrilled... but I'm not so sure :) Here's a small glimpse of those spaces...

I'll add an "end of summer" picture in a few months to show how they turned out, well I'm hoping!


Finally, the inspiration for my melodramatic title... I used some of our herbs today from the ever-growing herb garden containers to make herb butter which was a delicious addition to our first loaf of breadmaker bread.

(I found an excellent deal about a month ago when I bought a Pillsbury Bread Machine for $5 at a church rummage sale and finally tracked down the manual and instructions online... thanks to the "breadmaker guru" site.) Today was the first day to experiment with our handy machine and it did a wonderful job! I've been wanting to use my herbs frequently so that they'll continue to grow and herb butter seemed to be just the right addition. So I mixed some chopped thyme, oregano, basil, and chives with some softened butter. Here were the results (aka "the fruits of our labors")...

On an ending note - Does anyone know of something to do with sage? Its growing bigger and bigger because I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Any input would be great!

**many more frequent posts to come, my mind seems full of topics: last day of school; summer Bible study plans; summer goals; and for fun (this is an idea another teacher friend had) compare and contrast "summer Laura" and "school year Laura" :) **