But now, a new study from the University of North Florida has found that having flowers in one's home does a lot more than simply enhance your living room's aesthetics.
—-Diane Bruk, "8 Amazing Benefits of Having Flowers in Your Home," bestoflifeonline.com
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Friday morning has a sweet spot. Mark is gone to work; James is enjoying a lay-in. The house is quiet, the coffee is hot, and, if I like, there's a good book close to hand.
But after a half hour or so, my feet start to jiggle. It's daytime; it's a weekday. I should be DOING.
And this particular Friday, rain slogs down relentlessly. It's a perfect time, I think, to take care of the oregano and basil drying on the windowsill.
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We make, on the whole, a lot of red sauce. And Mark likes to quarter a tomato, chop a ball of fresh mozzarella into good-sized chunks, and add fresh basil leaves before dressing the whole mess. We cook herb-y skillets with summer squash, onions, carrots, and smoked sausage. With one thing and another, we use a lot of oregano and basil, so several years ago, we tried our hands at growing our own.
The deer don't like strong-smelling herbs, so they leave the plants alone. We have two oregano patches, one just behind the carport, one at the end of the driveway, that are exuberant and rambunctious. I can't keep up: I go out and harvest a big bundle of long stalky stems, and the trimmed plants look calmed, thoughtful, self-deprecating. They seem thinned out, healthy. I take the oregano in, wash it in the sink, roll it in a towel to get the excess wet away.
In two days, I can't tell my clippers had ever been in the garden. (Maybe the cutting stimulates growth?) The oregano is shouting at me, wildly, again.
The basil is less forthcoming. I tried growing plants from seed this year, using the tomato-plant method: first in egg cartons, then in small pots, then outside in the PigPen, sharing space with the tomato plants, which I've read is a wonderful symbiotic relationship.
But only one basil plant survived the process; it seems it might be better just to plant the seeds in big pots and let them grow without the disruption of removal. Next year, or even later this year, I might try that. For now, though, we bought three different kinds of basil at Wilson's, and we planted them in the Kitchen Sink garden. These plants, more worldly and mature, dug in handily, and now they thrive.
So I clip big bundles of oregano, and snip the topmost basil leaves, and the leaves that sprout at the very bottom of each plant, dragging in the dirt. Everything goes into the old white plastic colander, gets a nice shower and an enthusiastic towel rub, and then they stretch out and relax on that broad windowsill in the family room.
In a week, they are dry enough to crumble and store away.
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So, this rainy Friday, I bring the oregano to the kitchen counter, I once again drag out that old colander, and I rub each stem between my palms, crunching off the dried leaves. Pungent leaves fall into the white plastic. I do that with each stalk. It's time-consuming (some might suggest that buying oregano, already dried and sorted, is more time- and money-efficient, but, oh, well. Something about this process enchants me into keeping on.) But after a bit, I have colandered a nice pile of crunchy leaves.
I pick through for little stem bits.
The kitchen smells spicy.
I get out the cheap little coffee grinder I bought at Ollie's for just this purpose, and I grind up handful after handful of oregano, grind it into flakes, grind it so that exuberant big bundle melts down into, maybe, a half a cup of dried oregano. I add it to the shaker we keep in the cupboard.
Then I work on the basil. It doesn't dry with quite the same crunch, but it, too, submits to the call of the coffee grinder.
With the basil, I get maybe three tablespoons full of herbaceous flakes. I'll run out of basil by January (I really need to grow some inside), but the oregano will last until next summer. Maybe beyond.
And, on this rainy Friday morning, the grinding herbs conjure up sunny smells, anise-y, tangy, rich, and immediate.
It's like, as the rain pounds down (a much-needed rain; no complaints, really), grinding the herbs has brought the outside world into my kitchen.
Tomorrow, when the pounding rain calms down, I will go out and pick more, wash them, set them out to dry.
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Mark texts at work on Tuesday: Tom, Don, Jim, and Ed have arrived at the house. They are going to begin installing new windows upstairs.
This, for me, is a very big deal. We have not, for the span of our life here, been able to open windows. We rely on the air conditioning to cool the house; we live in a climate controlled atmosphere. This is good during hot, hot weather spells, but when the winds blow fresh and cool as night darkens a summer sky, when I crawl into bed, opening my book after a long, busy day, I miss the subtle breeze ruffling the curtains.
So I am glad we'll start the process of new window installation. I know nothing about the task, really; I figure it's complicated, that it will take a week or more.
When I get home from work just after 2:00, Don and Ed have just finished cleaning up. They are beaming.
The job is done: all the upstairs windows have been replaced.
They take me upstairs to show me their work. The only thing left, Don explains, is to finish the outdoor sills. There will be some trimming and something like metal flashing involved, but the windows are in, and they can be used right now.
I open the bathroom window, and fresh air pours in.
That night, I open the bedroom windows, and, while I read, the curtain bounce, light and gentle.
Those windows let the fresh air in. I fall asleep happy.
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Last year, Mark rototilled the old flower bed off to the side of the garage, and then he got a packet of wildflower seeds and broadcast them there. Nothing much happened, and we were disappointed.
But this year, I read something that suggested flowers don't really bloom until they've settled in for a full set of four seasons. And now, sure enough, we are seeing interesting blooms in that old neglected garden.
I recognize daisies, but otherwise, I have no idea what they are: there are flowers that look like golden daisies, and flowers with fuzzy magenta heads. Some of the stems are kind of frothy and ferny. There's something that might be Queen Anne's Lace, and I think we might have yarrow.
I don't know which are good guys and which are weeds, and we decide we will just let things grow until they get to a point where we can tell if they're friend or foe.
But, between the wild flowers and the deer resistant perennials we've been adding each year, I have plenty of flowers to cut for bouquets. There are coneflowers in two colors, and there are fat Shasta daisies. There are fuzzy white spikes, and there are another kind of magenta wonders; of course, I can't remember their name. There's a whole wide array of foliage to play with, too.
I go out picking—picking flowers from my own garden!—and I cut and fuss and arrange three little posies in some little milk bottles vases…the kind of bottles I remember getting chocolate milk in at the drive-up dairy where my father stopped for milk. Those little bottles were rare treats.
Now, the sight of those little clutches of home-grown flowers on the dining room dresser makes me smile.
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As I peel carrots for dinner, I remember sprouting carrot tops with my mother: we put the tops in a saucer and kept them watered. Soon, they would shoot up ferny green fronds. I gather three carrot tops into a small dish, pour in water, set them on the window sill above the sink.
The next day, I cut up some carrot sticks, and I add two more carrot tops to the little dish.
Every morning I check them; those chopped tops suck up water. Pretty soon I can see little green stumps emerging. I water them faithfully. The ferny greens begin to sprout.
I put them in an old Anchor Hocking glass dish, the kind my mother used for pickles. I put them on the dressing in the dining room, in front of the milk bottle flowers. The green sprouts grow taller, almost lacy.
Something satisfies about bringing plants, about coaxing sprouting, inside.
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Today, the air quality index is 32, which is better than yesterday at about this time, the weather app on my phone tells me. It's actually much, MUCH better: yesterday, the index was something like 174, and the app was loaded with warnings about being outside for too long, and I was reluctant, even, to take my morning walk.
Today, though, I can mow the meadow that used to be my front lawn, back before the rainy season descended, and, if I am really energetic, I might just do the back forty, too. And it will be good to get outside, to stretch, to think about our Canadian neighbors battling wildfires, to hope the fires are quenched soon (and that we quickly find a way to deal with this problem), and to cherish the thought of fresh air.
Early this morning, Mark and I took our steaming mugs and sat on the newly freshened-up back stoop, listening to the bird chatter in the otherwise quiet neighborhood. We watched a hummingbird dip and dart by what we call the magnolia bushes. We wondered when the mamas would start bringing their fawns to sleep under the big long-needled pine in the way back.
It was good to be outside.
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It's good, too, though, to bring the outside in, and this week, I celebrate that.
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