My Fabulous Fragrant Hour Among The Plants

I just love the way the winter sun shines on my fuzzy peppermint geranium leaves.  What a pleasure to work on the scented geraniums.  It's a delightful experience to remove all of the damaged leaves leaving the plant looking good.  Any time you work around scented geraniums they reward you with their incredible scent.  I dropped  three kinds of rose, nutmeg, and peppermint geranium leaves in my trug.   I cut back a very dead looking Provence lavender and added it to the mix along with some lemon grass and a few weeds.  The nutmeg geranium was quite leggy so I moved it into the sun and moved the as good as dead lavender out of the light.  Once plants are dead their light requirements reduce dramatically!

It took quite awhile to remove all the damaged leaves from the four lemon verbena plants. The entire time I was surrounded with the fragrance of lemon lollypops.  I cleaned up the frass too and found the cocoon.  All that was added to my trug.  The downstairs plants look much better.  At least one intruder has been removed.

Heading back upstairs, I stopped on the landing to water the rosemary and the other plants there.  The rosemarys are still making buds.  I removed a few gone past flowers, but these plants will need my attention very soon.

So here is my trug containing fragrant leaves and the scents of rose, peppermint, nutmeg lemon and rosemary.  If it didn't also contain frass and that insect cocoon it could pass for potpourri.  In this case it is just incredibly fragrant compost.  It certainly made for some enjoyable gardening time in spite of very cold day.

The Cold Truth

There was no way I was going outside to take garden pictures today.  Even our double pane windows had formed ice on the inside.  Instead I took pictures of our indoor plants.  I had a nice picture of a rosemary blossom and a lovely picture of winter sunshine on fuzzy peppermint geranium leaves.  I could have used pretty pictures and left the impression that everything was rosy, but I didn't do that.  Instead I'm writing the cold hard truth!  It is frigid here.  Overnight the temperature dropped to -10.  My garden has a little snow cover, but it's a thin sheet when what is really needed is a heavy blanket.  More than that both Ed and I have colds as well.  We did venture out today. The snow made that loud crunching noise under our feet that only happens when it's right around zero or below.  If you are looking for blooms here only the rosemary has them.  They are small, but lovely like a little blue orchid, however a closer look reveals aphids and a gross blob of stuff that they leave on the plants.

Meanwhile downstairs under the lemon verbenas, this is what we find on the window sill under the plants.  I know frass when I see it and the leaves on the branch above have definitely been chewed.

Upon close inspection I found this.  The Pollyanna in me wants to think this is some sort of beneficial insect, but I know  the cold hard truth is that it will probably hatch out into a leaf eating machine.   Lemon verbena leaves are delightful with a delicious lemony flavor and scent.  I like to eat them myself.  Tomorrow will be the last day for whatever lives in that furry little cocoon.  My indoor plants need my attention.  Maybe we'll do the winter sunshine on fuzzy peppermint geranium leaves next time!