Herbal Habits and Hobbit Habitats

The seed catalogues are arriving! At last! The first signs of spring! In many places, seed catalogs are still greeted as a blessing from heaven! The light at the end of the long dark wintry tunnel.

I love to look at catalogs and get ideas. I started browsing the online seed catalogues today, and placed two orders! Now I'm excited. We grow mostly perennials, veggies and bulbs, so we don’t get to make many changes, or place big orders. The good news and the bad news. It’s hard to get ramped up when your garden is just plain full.

This year, our trusty vegetable garden will shrink even more, in order to grow more herbs, especially a new favourite ~~ a brilliant orange calendula, said to be much more medicinally active than others. Great for skin care. Here’s the link to my favourite herb grower and seed supplier, in case you want to take a look: richters.com

They have a wonderful selection, and great knowledge to back it up. I also can’t wait for our order to arrive from a company on Vancouver Island.

• fairydoor.com

We’ve ordered a cedar 'hobbit door', complete with brass lion door knocker!

About 9 inches diameter. And an 'elf door', smaller, rounded on top. A couple of round fairy windows will complete the effect, turning a wild corner of the garden into a miniature world between the worlds. I could go on and on, with miniature mailbox and clothesline. We’re already thinking up ‘hobbit runes’ to inscribe over the door, deciding whether or not to paint. Never big on garden cuteness before, yet this has captured our imaginations.

We live right across the street from an elementary school. Cars pull up every morning, and kids pile out. I can’t wait to see the faces on kindergarten age kids, when they spot a real hobbit house, right across from the school!

Glad to be able to do our small bit to keep the magic alive. And it's always good to keep the fairies happy, with some fairy feng shui. What is between the worlds changes all the worlds. Sweet dreams of spring!