Spent the day in the garden yesterday - clearing the brambles mainly and pruning my slightly evil hawthorn hedge - my arms are duely scratched up this morning!!! But what a joy to see all the new buds and various greens popping up from the earth - I picked loads of cleavers dug up some carrots n juiced them with some root ginger mmm delicious.

It was International Women's Day Yesterday http://www.internationalwomensday.com/ and I had it firmly in my head and all the while I gardened I was thinking about all the great women herbalists, healers n gardeners - In my work as a Witch Herbalist it seems to be mainly Ladies that come for Workshops n Healing - It was like that on our degree course as well 99% girls interesting as the Chinese Herbal Medicine Degree course was more men then women, wonder why?

loads of love
K x

Hi Karen

I edited your email because the link wasn't working. I also got out into the garden yesterday, in the sun you could almost believe it was spring, although things were frozen solid in pots and the ground was rock hard with no chance of digging anything up lol! I did some pruning and potted up some new herbs and got some seeds sown and it did my sould good. Like you I was happy to see all the lovely new growth coming through the earth, I really can't wait for more growth and the chance to make more use of the herbs I grow, I've made lots of plans, just need to make them a reality now

As an aside, maybe some of the forum users should share photos of their gardens, favourite corners or plants so we can all see what each other gets up to?

In the herb group that I co-founded with Sarah we have about 3 chaps (not including 2 hubbies) that attend occasioanlly, but the majority of our members are women. Maybe its the term herbwife, we don't have herb-husbands do we? I think men are more interested in the cultivation of herbs than the uses, medicine making, cooking and craft uses of herbs have traditionally been seen as a female domain.

Could it be that there are in the public eye more remedies available for men and mens problems in Chinese medicine that draw the menfolk out? The actually numbers of female to male members of the Herb Society are stacked in favour of the women, and if I'm honest a lot of what I do on the web could be construed as being from a female persepective. So how do we encourage more men into the world of herbs and what sort of things are they interested in herbally? Come on all you menfolk clue us in???

Debs

Up here in NE Scotland, I'm still waiting to see what has survived the winter - we had snow, floods, gales, days of sub-zero temps for 11 weeks and looks like I might have lost quite a few herbs - certainly none of my rosemary plants look very healthy although the sage looks fine.

Spent most of last year revamping the back garden (previously a messy grassed area that couldn't in all honesty be described as a lawn) into raised beds (and one sunken damp bed) for my herbs but I'm afraid a lot of the baby perennial herbs I planted out in autumn will not have been well enough established to survive such a winter. Only time will tell which are truly hardy.

I'll try and post a photo of the garden if I can work out how!

Erica Hollis BSc MNIMH
www.rowancottherbs.co.uk

Hi Erica

If you can't figure it out, email me the photo and I'll add it for you using PhotoBucket which I use for the forum photos.

Debs

been out today sorting out the pavement pots...

...lost 1 rosemary and possibly the lemon thyme (didn't get to it today but its looking grim)

Ruffling up the soil and pulling off the moss and the dark wet soil showed the fresh green off beautifully. Sooo much more growth than I thought. My self-seeded Cowslip flowered for the first time this year (I think because the cold killed off the moss and grass that was choking it) It's sitting pride of place by the door now. Daffodils poking through too...

I cut back the dead lemon balm and found loads of hidden new growth too. But - I've never seen this before - some of the new growth is purple. Anyone else come across this?

Hi Claire

I have two different lemon balms, a variegated one (Melissa officinalis 'Aurea') and the standard one, which in my garden gets giant leaves, but that's another story. I find that new growth on the Aurea does have a purple 'cast' to it when its first growing in the Spring and it tends to look glossy for the first few weeks. As it grows taller, it looks how its supposed to. Not sure why this happens but it tends to be worse when we've had a colder winter? Not seen any new aurea in the garden so far, but I haven't been looking, will have a look tomorrow and see if it has purple bits this year, if it does I'll take a photo and we can compare. Mind you you may not have Aurea...?

It is good to get out and do stuff, all being well I'll be getting some seed sowing done this weekend, just got some new herbs that need to go in the greenhouse until things warm up a bit, but there is promise in the air and the scent of fresh herb tea isn't so far away now

D x

Not sure what kind it is - another self-seeder...

Will try and get some pics on Monday. My pots are on the pavement on a main road - feel a bit of a tube out there taking pics of my plants when all the kids are hanging about...

About the big leaves though - mine tend to come up normal then flower and after that (cut or no cut) a really lush new growth comes up with really big green leaves but this growth never flowers...

My thyme still looks a bit dodgy and I've lost my fennel too - big mushy mess.

But the wee strawberry runners made it fine - yay!

Can we post pics here or just links to pics?

Cx

Hi Claire

If you can figure out how to post pics then feel free, br nice to see what other people grow.

D x