Browse published articles attributed to Francis Rosenfeld, with full-archive search.
The difference between a cream and a salve is that salves always contain beeswax and they are a lot firmer (think lip balm). A salve is a blend of oil and beeswax in proportion of five to one more or less. Salves are often made with infused oils that extract the medicinal qualities of herbs directly into one of the basic ingredients.
Three major factors contribute to the health of your skin: good nutrition and general wellbeing, good conditioning and removing dead cells and impurities. Good nutrition and general well-being
As nature's shop closes, the home spice jars are finally put to good use. All the dried mint that hung in bunches in the kitchen all summer, the rose petals from June's bloom, the lavender kernels, the gentle chamomile, the dried aromatic herbs. It is time for scent in the diminished light, time to simmer clove oil on the stove, time to bake apples and dry fruit. The harvest of fall always requires vanilla, cinnamon and cloves.
This is so exciting! I have heard so many stories and legends about this flower, but I never actually saw it before. This is Galium Verum, Lady’s Bedstraw, the flower of St. John, a plant so deeply associated with the summer solstice that some even believe it only blooms on the Eve of St. John’s Feast. That part is obviously not true.r
Let me share a few things about this plant, some learned, some experienced. The learned facts first. French mallow originated in Europe and is as almost as old as written history. Some varieties are used as edible leafy vegetables and feature in traditional dishes from around the shores of the Mediterranean. The French name of this plant, mauve de bois, was chosen by William Perkin (the inventor of the first synthetic dye) around the mid-nineteenth century to define the specific purple hue which is the only color these wild flowers come in.
I gingerly stepped out the door and a blast of cold air threw me back in. It's February. So much for my gardening enthusiasm, I guess I can stick to potpourri and fragrant sachets for now but since late winter is a good time for tree planting, let's talk about fruit trees.
Since the beginning of my gardening journey I wished for a fragrance garden, so I planted the well known scented flowers like sweet peas, lilies, and carnations. The garden surprises you, though, because that heavenly scent, that fragrance that fills the air and seems to originate nowhere doesn't usually come from these plants. Have you ever wondered around your flower patch trying to trace a delightful fragrance and had trouble finding its source? Some of the perfume masters come as a surprise, others are quite obvious.
Not sure what to do with your harvest? This is a traditional recipe from the Balkans that is usually made in large quantities to keep over the winter. The small batch below is for sampling, to test whether you would like to try it on a larger scale. It is served cold as a dip or as a sandwich spread. Ingredients:rn- 1 lb of tomatoes - 2 large eggplants - 4 bell peppers, the more colorful the better - 1 medium onion - 2 tablespoons of olive oil - 1 hot pepper - bay leaves, pepperco s, hot pepper flakes, salt and pepper
Growing a perennial garden presents one with the weird predicament of having to work around the clock without actually planting anything. In a perennial garden, everything revolves around maintenance. Here are a few challenges.
Pumpkin pie lovers are spoiled beyond reason between the end of November and the end of the year. There are infinite variations of the delicious desert, all nutmeg, clove and cinnamon, vanilla and brown sugar. I'd like to share my grandmother's recipe, which comes in strudel form. It is one of those food items that gets passed on from generation to generation and adds to the meaningfulness of shared holiday meals.
As a child I used to watch with fascination as my grandfather's hands gently teased apart leaves and flowers and spread them over paper towels to dry in the hot still air of the attic. That attic looked much like an apothecary's shop with dried hot pepper bunches, hanging herbs, long braids of onions and garlic and drying racks of chamomile and lovage intermixing their fragrances in an indescribable but immediately recognizable scent.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to bring the sophisticated and aristocratic vanilla bean to you? I thought about it many times and figured if I ever had a greenhouse this would be the first plant I'd like to grow, so I wanted to learn more about it and this is what I found out.
Bath salts. The base of a bath salt is an equal mix of sea salt and baking soda. To this one adds other ingredients as one wishes: dried and powdered herbs, powdered resins, powdered milk, clays and muds, food coloring for effects, and of course essential oils. Go easy on peppermint and cinnamon, they irritate the skin, and citrus oils, which can induce a phototoxic reaction. Store in a pretty jar and replenish as needed. Creams.
I often mention that the garden has a will of its own and bends the intent of landscape design to seasonal whimsy. Last year it decided to take on a cool look in white and green right at the end of August when flower beds traditionally boast bright oranges, yellows and fiery reds.
You look at this modest spice and find it hard to believe than all through Antiquity and the Middle Ages it was more valuable than gold. Pepper was the first of the exotic spices to reach the Mediterranean Basin and the search for it opened up travelling routes that became legendary and fired people's imagination for almost a thousand years - the Silk road, the Incense route, the travel around the Cape of Good Hope.
If you haven't grown eggplant before you probably don't know that the flowers boast the same unusual color as their glossy fruit. Eggplant flowers are the most beautiful of all bushy vegetables, deep lavender with a bright yellow middle.
Every year the generous tomato plants bless us with an overabundance of fruit that doesn't have the chance to ripen before the first frost. Tomatoes take their sweet time to figure out how to bear more and more fruit and their best and most abundant yield goes so far into the fall they don't have time to finish it. For any of the tomatoes that started ripening even slightly, just keeping them on a counter in your kitchen for a few days will turn them into salad fare. They may not be as tasty as the ones that ripen on a vine, but will still be juicy and delicious.
There are few things that match the joy of watching children take charge of little projects, and gardening projects are no exception. Set aside a little patch of dirt for your kids to plant seeds and watch things grow. Make sure it is reasonably fertile and in full sun, you don't want to make a starter project so challenging that it generates disillusionment rather than the pride of accomplishment. Stick to annuals. Turn the dirt at a spade's depth early in the spring, to ensure that most of the seeds will germinate.
I don't know how many people grew up with fruit compote as a staple of their diet. My grandparents made it throughout the summer to preserve fruit for the cold months. My grandmother's apricot compote was so good I still dream about it on occasion.
Now and then I get a renewed enthusiasm for making my own beauty products and the kitchen turns into a magical apothecary where decadently sweet smelling lotions and potions steam and brew. Sometimes I think making the creams, oils and perfumes is more enjoyable than using them. Not! For a few hours I become the wizard of sparkle and glamor, stirring pots of melted cocoa, shea butter or coconut oil, assessing the concentration of herbal decoctions and taking in the wholesome scent of liquid beeswax. Home-made products smell heavenly even before you add fragrance.
If you would like to try your hand at serious bulb propagation, a method often used by professional growers, especially for hyacinths, is called scooping, and it is known to produce up to thirty bulblets from a single bulb. Clean and dry a large and healthy hyacinth bulb and scoop out the basal plate, together with the shoot and flower bud at the center. If possible, apply fungicide to discourage the development of mold. Stick the cored bulb upside down, buried about half way in coarse wet sand and keep the container in a warm, dark location, making sure the sand stays moist.
I didn't move the gorgeous Raspberry Sorbet peonies last fall and now they are spending another year trying to assert their needs in the midst of the rugosa rose thicket.
So, you have your heart set on creating a wildflower meadow and those packages of mixed seeds beckon you from the stands, irresistibly. You picture wild flowers and the thought of perpetual, zero maintenance beauty springs to mind. Wild flower meadows are not low maintenance, at least not for the first five or six years, while they are getting established. First of all, a wildflower meadow is not the same as a wildflower garden. Tall grass is an integral part of what makes it thrive as a whole and not something that can be easily accommodated on a small residential lot.
Imagine an open field of roses extending as far as the eyes can see, an eighty mile long garden. Hundreds of thousands of bushels of rose petals get picked, boiled and distilled, and re-distilled, and purified, until out of one thousand pounds of petals five ounces of precious attar of roses are extracted. A perfume so strong that it is too much for a person to bear undiluted. You can't extract the quintessence of a sunset but you can concentrate scent to its purest form. Every time you take the lid off the little bottle, an eighty mile long rose garden comes out.
I was walking through the plant nursery trying to decide what to add to the fall garden when a giant blue hyssop literally grabbed on to my sleeve. Its lavender flowers soaked the surroundings in a wildly intoxicating aroma of anise and licorice as I brushed against them, reminding me why hyssop is one of the primary ingredients for chartreuse. The scent of licorice complemented the afte oon sunlight, enticing butterflies and bees and adding spicy accents to the end of summer palette.
Working with herbs is an art and small details in the practice of harvesting and preserving them makes the difference between success and failure. Harvesting: Always harvest herbs in the morning, right after the dew has dried up but before the heat makes the plants release their volatile oils. Harvest fresh young leaves free of blemishes from areas away from roads and traffic. If you grow herbs for their flowers, always pick the flowers before they fully open. Never harvest plants on rainy days. Storage:r
Hepatica has been considered a medicinal plant in the past, but this is one of the cases where scientific reasoning needs to override lore: the plant belongs to the Ranunculaceae family, just like the buttercup, and contains the same toxic compounds, albeit in much smaller doses. Hepatica is poisonous in large quantities. It is occasionally used in homeopathy, but this is definitely not something safe to do at home.
INGREDIENTS: (1) bowl of strawberries, (2) pounds of sugar, (3) cups of water, juice from one lemon. Soak the strawberries in ice water for an hour. Change the water a couple of times so that it stays ice cold. Strain them and drain them on a towel. After they are dry, place them in a heavy non-stick pan in alte ating layers with sugar and end with a thick layer of sugar on top. Squeeze the juice from half a lemon on top. Cover the pan with a cheese cloth and let stand over night in a cool place for 10 to 12 hours.
Whether you grow lemon verbena as a medicinal or an aromatic plant, it gets plenty of uses, from flavoring fish and fruit salads, as a replacement or in addition to lemon zest, to pleasant calming brews. For those who love to exercise, it is particularly effective in reducing muscle and joint damage after strenuous physical activity without undoing any of its benefits. Lemon verbena is a powerful antioxidant, but be careful when you use it, because it may make you sleepy.
I looked far and wide for signs of spring, which is a testimony to my undying optimism, and there is nothing, nothing, I tell you! Not even a little shivering primrose, or a tentative daffodil, just nothing on ice with a side of leafless trees. As it very well should be, what self-respecting plant would consider sprouting in single digit temperatures? In view of the seasonal gloom, I turn my attention to decadent, unabashed pampering: moisturizing oils, nourishing face and hair masks, nail treatments, the world is my spa.r
Usually the feast of St. John brings the coldest day of the year, but this time arctic weather was delayed for two weeks. I cozy up indoors with a hot cup of herbal tea and dreamy gardening books as the thermometer indicates 8 degrees Fahrenheit outside. No matter how enthusiastic one is about gardening there are limits to the possible and approaching 0F definitely rules out any outdoor activity. Everything is frozen solid, the dirt is harder than rock, I pity the birds and squirrels.
Just a few rules that will make your food preservation safe and successful: 1.Processing Temperatures. Foods suited for canning are divided into acidic (<4.6 PH) - basically all fruits, tomatoes, sauerkraut and all acid added products (pickles) and non-acidic (4.6PH or more) - vegetables, meats, fish and mixed sauces. Acidic canned products need to be boiled (212F degrees) and non-acidic canned products need to be pressure canned (240F degrees or more) to ensure the botulinum spore is destroyed.
You have to get really close to appreciate toad lilies' blossoms which are small but unbelievably detailed. I don't think there is a flower in this part of the world that so closely approximates orchids. They are hardy to zone 5 and bloom in the shade, the last flowers to bloom in the garden after the trees have shed their leaves, the sedums have gone to seed and even the all suffering calendulas succumbed to the cold.
I had to give the sage a serious hair cut so that the struggling rose could emerge from under it. When plants thrive, they thrive. I’ve had this clump of sage for two years, and it expanded through all the seasons, including winter, only it knows why! I really don’t know what to do with sage, really, but that is a question for later in the season, when I’ll start harvesting it, for now I’m just looking forward to its bloom, which is about to start any moment now. The scent sage exudes as it dries is surprisingly pleasant, considering the pungent smell of its fresh leaves.
It appears that the regular consumption of cocoa increases blood flow to the brain, thus helping it work faster and stalling neuron degeneration. Just in case we needed more reasons to reach for that chocolate bar. We don't normally think about it, but it takes a lot of effort for said sweet treat to reach the candy isle, chocolate making is a lengthy and complex process.
After a few years of gardening I realized how much I take hostas for granted. They are ever present in the shade and will grow where no plant has grown before. Their relative worth of thriving in the shade tends to underscore their absolute value as ornamental plants, but hostas can hold their own with the rest of the perennials in terms of bloom quality, fragrance, foliage and easy maintenance.
I once wondered through a park under a shady canopy of green leaves, heavy with flowers and sweet fruit and flocks of colorful singing birds seeking shelter in the glossy foliage. The park extended for an entire city block and its tree branches reached sixty feet up in the air. Twisted trunks dove deep into the ground for nutrients, interweaving their roots to claim territory and support each other from the caprices of wind and water.
Tuberose oil is a staple scent for perfumery, obtained through chemical extraction by means of concretes and absolutes, and it is one of the most expensive natural fragrances available to perfumers. Because of the flower's patrician demeanor and its expensive essence I always thought the tuberoses were difficult plants that require extreme amounts of care and pampering, but no, they are sturdy and gritty and like most summer bulbs they need virtually no care.
I got catmint for its pleasant scent, a blend of peppermint and pennyroyal, and its pale lavender flowers, a very refreshing sight on hot summer afte oons. It is one of the coveted perennials that bloom at the end of summer and it requires very little in terms of care.
People ask gardeners all the time why they waste so much time and effort on an activity that at any scale smaller than a farm yields so little benefit? Green thumbs may be blindsided by the question, shrug their shoulders and keep on with the activity they were engaged in, for how can one quantify that feeling of achievement, that inner knowing that one's own hands have helped, even if in a very small way, bring out life from the depths of the earth?
The new light shade flower beds are quickly coming to life with plants from all over the yard, a constant reminder that a perennial patch is the gift that keeps on giving. My garden of hellebores is actually happening.
I just finished creating a lovely shade garden which features a very welcome addition, "Stained Glass" hostas. These plants have everything the sun-starved gardener could hope for: beautiful and resilient foliage that weathers heat and drought, dramatic colors and large fragrant flowers worthy of flower shows. Almost everybody has a dry shady corner in their yard they would like to ignore, but gnaws slowly on their green thumb pride like a slug on a cabbage leaf. One resigns oneself to keeping it tidy, which turns out to be quite easy, since even weeds won't grow without sun and water.
You don't know how spoiled you are as a gardener until you grow a hellebore. Up here in the northern states we are not used to seeing flowers in January, maybe some evergreen foliage under a somber sky. Most of the trees are gray and leafless and the usual sights of the garden are tired dried stems of decorative grasses left to over-winter for cold season interest. In the middle of this landscape the hellebores look like they are pasted from another picture, one with lush gardens basking in warm humid air that smells like humus and mushrooms.
Like so many people, I too stared at the sun for a couple of hours, to watch it turn from a ball of fire into a thin crescent of light. We were not in the total eclipse zone and because of that, sunlight shone through the entire time. I could only see the moon’s shadow through special glasses, but the day did turn darker and colder in the process.
Pruning is a simple and necessary part of keeping a rose healthy, strong and blooming. If you prune the rose wrong, you may not get a lot of flowers the following year, or none at all, but there is no wrong way to prune that will kill an established rose. If anything, if you can live with a couple of years of no flowers, the rose will get a lot of rest and renewed energy for new growth. Why prune roses There are four reasons to prune roses: remove old and diseased canes to make room for more growth, allow air movement, shape the bushes to your liking and encourage blooming.
If you have a sunny slope that is difficult to mow, in a location with well drained, sandy soil, try a chamomile lawn. The delightful apple scent is a reward in itself, and using chamomile as a groundcover offers some advantages, like low mowing, feeding and watering needs, but the plant is definitely not low maintenance.r
Sometimes you just need the right lighting to really appreciate colorful foliage, although this little purple beauty won't go unnoticed through the summer when it competes for interest with the daisies and the crane's bills. Another near miss in the battle with the mighty hellebores (I swear, they are bent on garden domination if left to their own devices), these exotic looking coral bells seem very happy in their new location in dappled shade.
Spring didn't come early this year, the daffodils and hyacinths are still struggling with the cold weather. This comes somewhat as a relief, last year's spring arrived unseasonably early and was followed by a damaging summer of drought.
The peonies would have bloomed by now, the buds have been ready to burst for more than a week, but it is so unseasonably cold, weird May weather! Temperatures in the fifties, I almost have to question the wisdom of moving the basil outside, it looks miserable. Peonies are the object lesson for why gardeners benefit from being patient. You don’t get this cascade of blooms from a plant that doesn’t ask anything of you until you put a few years into it. Three, to be specific.r
This is an edible plant, widely used around the Mediterranean Basin to flavor omelets, pasta and risotto. Its young greens make a tasty addition to meals when stewed in a little olive oil, just like chards and spinach. It can be eaten uncooked, but the raw leaves taste bitter because they contain small and harmless amounts of saponins. In Cyprus it has become so popular that in recent years people took to purposefully cultivating and selling bunches of it with the other edible greens.