As well as the lemon balm that Mick dug up at his parents, he found one hiding in a seedling flat that we had started tomatoes in! It had volunteered along with a pigweed, the pigweed went in the compost, the balm went into a larger pot.
We had also found some stevia at country max for a dollar apiece. They say they root easily provided the day is long enough, so we're giving it a go. We're drying the leaves we stripped off to make the cuttings, and stevia is no scam, they are intensely, intensely sweet!
He has also been busy in the kitchen, putting up. I didn't think there would be a cool enough day for him to want to can for a couple more months yet, but yesterday has worked out to be lovely. He made a batch of applesauce, with some apples we bought on discount at Wade's and a large bag of Empires, which were lunch leftovers that he rescued from the trash at drill.
The apple cores and peels that did not become part of the applesauce, he boiled down to make apple jelly. It looks beautiful! The peels now taste like water, so all of their flavor definitely went into the jelly. What color!
In between canning the applesauce and apple peel jelly, he processed several jars of tomato sauce, which he made by combining tomato puree we bought with a great coupon and vegetables that his folks had dehydrated last summer and gave to us. Those two cans of tomato puree started at a volume of 3.2-ish pints, we added dried patty pan squash, zucchini, peppers, eggplant, water, and herbs until we wound up with eight pints! We are excited to have more tomato sauce in the house without having to wait for our tomatoes to come in this summer. (We really like pizza.)
Our rose of sharon is beginning to bloom now.
After knocking a beetle from it, Mick got a picture of a flower close up.
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