When you start looking into its qualities, rosemary can be quite intimidating, it seems to be good for everything: it makes hair grow strong and shiny, rejuvenates skin, boosts memory and concentration, sharpens eyesight, thins the blood and helps lower the risk of cancer. This impressive resume is due to the fact that rosemary is rich in iron, calcium, phosphorus, vitamins A, C and B6, folate, and some other plant specific compounds that act synergistically.
Of course this is not why I couldn't get out of the garden center without two small rosemary pots, that happened because I love its flavor, I can never come out of a plant nursery without becoming the proud owner of something green and leafy and the very healthy rosemary bush I was planning to overwinter succumbed to a surprise early freeze last fall.
Dried rosemary doesn't hold a candle to the fresh sprigs which are succulent and fragrant and go with chicken, fish, pork, lamb, and almost any sauce, soup or stew, so there was that reason...
I got used to having a pot of rosemary around, it is so green and fresh, it lifts my spirits and looks like the picture of health.
This doesn't explain the lemon verbena and a couple of seed packets that just happened to join it. I couldn't help it, ok? They had every garden herb, temptation was everywhere, within arm's reach, thyme, lavender, a gazillion mints, tarragon, parsley, you name it, they had it. It just was too much, I'm only human...
Main Areas: Garden Writing; Sustainable Gardening; Homegrown Harvest
Published Books: “Terra Two”; “Generations”; "Letters to Lelia"; "Fair"; "The Plant - A Steampunk Story"Career Focus: Author; Consummate Gardener;
Affiliation: All Year Garden; The Weekly Gardener; Francis Rosenfeld's Blog
I started learning about gardening from my grandfather, at the age of four. Despite his forty years' experience as a natural sciences teacher, mine wasn't a structured instruction, I just followed him around, constantly asking questions, and he built up on the concepts with each answer.
I started blogging in 2010 to honor his memory and share the joy of growing all things green and the beauty of the garden through the seasons. Two garden blogs were born this way: allyeargarden.com and theweeklygardener.com, a periodical that followed it one year later. I wanted to assemble an informal compendium of the things I learned from him, wonderful books, educational websites, and my own experience, in the hope that other people might find it useful it in their own gardening practice.