HerbnArts

       ... It is late August and in the otherwise quiet morning, I can hear the noisy rattle of cicadas with an accompaniment of crickets chirping in the background.  These familiar summer sounds confirm for me that the world goes on no matter what is happening all around. The occasional dry leaf slowly floats down from neighborhood trees.  In spite of the copious rains we have experienced here in the Magic City, things are dry.  My father, a woodsman by nature, taught me to observe nature and to read the signs of the seasons it shared.  As gardeners, my grandmother and her sisters talked about the signs of the seasons. predicting the next seasons ahead by reading those signs.  Is it any wonder I contemplate the seasons ahead by reading nature's signs as I sip my tea or coffee to start my day.  I guess I have become the go-to gal for my friends who somehow expect me to knowingly predict the following season's weather.  Maybe I should start dressing like a wooly bear caterpillar

      ... A cabbage moth flitted lightly around the flowering thyme, stopping now and then, flittering again to another spot on the fragrant herb.  It was a gentle reminder of the warm sunny days of August.  Was it really August already?  Where had the summer gone?  I had more basil than I could manage to harvest and my thyme plants were spilling onto the walkways.  The many rainstorms of the summer had left the herbs growing with wild abandon, making them grow faster than I could manage to harvest.  The various mints in Le Petit Jardin were growing crazily everywhere.  Thank heaven they were growing in containers or I would be strangling from their "Day of the Triffids" growth. This summer season I had managed to include a few red geraniums in pots on my front deck.  Their cherry red blooms have been a happy greeting each time I come home.  As usual I have been late at shaping up Le Petit Jardin.  For all my gardening good intentions, I have not managed to plant any sunflowe