HerbnArts

        ... April showers brings May flowers"...It must be so, because we in Barberton are noticing all the flowering trees and spring flowers as we float by on our pontoon boats.  That's actually a local joke in reference to how much rain and flooding we have experienced lately.  I would begin the spring clean-up of Le Petit Jardin if it would ever stop raining.  Meanwhile, I drink more tea while nibbling a cookie as I plan how I will set up this year's gardens.  Lots of art projects are bombarding my brain as I stir my gardening mojo during the wet waiting.  Lately I have been on a lemon kick since discovering scrumptious non-gluten lemon shortbread cookies.  Lemon scented candles have perfumed my abode and I have been using lemon essential oils as my springtime personal fragrance.  Watercolor images flood my imagination as I think of herb stores from the past.  Those were my happy places years ago.  Now gone from the scene, those store/nurseries were remembered as I ind

   ...Azure skies shone as the bright sun made everything sparkle.  It was making February in Ohio seem as though spring had already arrived with uncommonly mild weather.  What an odd winter we have had this year as everywhere around us was slammed  with snow and ice storms, as we hardly knew what happened around our protective bubble of weather.  Local lawnmowers have been tuning up in anticipation of the green grass season soon to come.  The groundhog was highly confused as he had no sun shining on his big day. ”You woke me up for this?!!!",  he seemed to say.  No shadow for Punxatawny Phil this year. Everyone other than Phil was of course thrilled.  In reality, I saw neighborhood groundhogs searching for food last week and slipping under my neighbor's porch.  Even the birds are a bit confused as to whether it is spring or not.  Last week I had an Alfred Hitchcock moment when the noise of large flocks of birds drew my attention to my kitchen window.  What I saw stunned me as