Lavender Gifts and A Give Away

Wow, I feel like I have not blogged in like....forever!

and I must admit it felt pretty good to take a break

I need to catch up....quick

so

 here are my quick tips for harvesting your lavender buds 

for potpourri and sachets

Once your stems are air dried and turning grey you simply

grab a clean good sized bucket

Turn your bundles upside down and gently rub the stems back and forth in the palms of your hands

You will feel the buds easily drop off 

I had 5 tied bundles and the yield was about 3 cups of dried buds

But a little goes a long way

I like to mix the buds with a custom blended mix of 

other herbs and dried flowers for a beautiful potpourri 

The dried stems are a great addition to a gift basket

This is a gift basket that I did for someone to send as a gift to her Aunt

She bought the baguette basket from the Polished Pebble Shop and then

  picked a few other little items to make it really special

3 lavender sachets 

and some wonderful bath salts and a scrubby

We added a gift card 

and tied it all up with beautiful bright ribbon

So now I have a gift for you!

Just leave a comment on this post and you will be entered to win a gift bag full of goodies 

just like the things I just sent

I will pick TWO winners at random next Friday 

Thank you all so much for being so supportive of the blog 

and for always leaving such great and kind comments

By the way....if you emailed me with a question and I have not responded, 

I really apologize for the delay!  I will try to get to all of the emails as quickly as I can

Thanks for stopping by....can't wait to pick a winner

kelley

lavender

lavender season ended for the most part 

about a month ago
in mid July

the lavender garden was really quite beautiful and more importantly the bee's were in heaven....

 I am really considering getting some bee hive boxes for the orange orchard

most of my lavenders planted throughtout the property is the Grosso variety
which provides the essential oil for use in soaps, lotions etc

It is very tall and spikey with long narrow clusters of blue grey flowers

just walking through the lavender 

gives off that amazing earthy scent

if is wasn't so full of bumble bees it might be fun to have a chair in the middle of the plants! 

there are actually quite a few plants that we have that are suitable for drying
 and I tried a few things out earlier this summer

but the lavender is hands down the most fun to dry 

and I really love having it in little bowls in the house

we had some rather mild weather in July followed this month
by a really nasty heat wave...but the lavender is still holding up 

 this large bed is a huge drift of about 100 or so plants...

in the center of the bed are some old wine barrels

planted with geranium and willow tertuers

the geranium are just popping up above the spikey blue stems

this is what Grosso looks like dried

I wrap it with butchers twine and hang it for about a week or so 

lavender is really

wonderful to photograph too!

now on to the harvest

next post....ideas for using lavender to give as a gift

hope you are staying cool ; 0 )

kelley