NO TIME

I was supposed to do a thing on the bee balm...Hold on let me get some picked...

...

OKay.  Sorry you had to wait a whole...space. Actually, the space was like, an hour...but time passing is hard to document.

So let me start out with my drying rack.  This is a little something I put together to dry my herbs.  its a wire with little tiny clothespins I got from the baby shower favor section of the Dollar General.  Simply hang it on the wall wherever and there ya go.  You can take it down and put it in a drawer when your not using it, and it really looks pretty when you have your herbs strung up on it. 

Anyway, bee balm.  You can find it all over the place during the month of July.  The stuff that grows here is a light purple, but I've also seen it a kind of red, pink, darker purple.  The leaves are shown in the picture above, but what you really notice is the smell.  Kind of a pungent minty/catnip sort of smell.  This is a pot herb and can be used as an extra flavor in all kinds of dishes.  Also known as Bergamont, this is the plant that replaced black tea after the Boston Tea Party and makes what is most commonly known as Oswego Tea.   Now that you have your bee balm, you want to hang it upsidedown to dry.

Pretty right?  The smell is so nice too and you can use it as potpourri if you like.  It goes really well with apple.

You go ahead and let this dry for a couple of weeks.  you know its ready when it is very crackly and there is no moisture in the stems at all.  Dried looks like this:

From here you can store it in an airtight container and use it at will all winter. 

Bee balm is a natural antiseptic and the tea  can be used as a treatment for mouth and throat problems caused by bad teeth and gingivitis.  If you can stand it, bite down on a raw or dried head  where you may have a bad tooth as the antiseptic can help with a toothache and also has a numbing action, though the raw head is very strong in flavor-trust me here, I know.  I tried it on a toothache.  Very strong taste, but the toothache did stop.  The leaves and buds are a wonderful seasoning and pot herb adding flavor to wild game and even fruit.

According to Wikki,  The Winnebago used a tea made from bee balm as a stimulant, though from personal experience, I find it very relaxing and folk lore states that bee balm supposedly "calms the bees."  You can also drink the tea to combat excessive gas pains.

To make tea, you can use the whole plant, stem and all.  I simply "harvest" a sprig from my drying line and break it up in my little bullet blender thing. 

I use my little bender thing a lot and ended up having to wash a cup out quick--as you can see, it was a little moist in there, but its okay because I'm going to use the tea right away.  Just make sure if you want to grind up all your tea ahead, that your blender thing is completely dry.  Any moisture and you will end up with mold and all your hard work will have gone to waste.

And there it is all chopped up.  Then you want to pack it up in your tea spoonie/strainer thingy, or you can sew up little bags out of small squares of cheese cloth, or you can throw a handful in the bottom of your cup/teapot and strain it out-whatever.  I have a spoonie/pincher/tea strainer-thing.

Bring your water to a boil and pour it over your leaves, then let is steep for 5 minutes.  Sweeten with honey if you like or sugar.  I prefer honey since local honey has so many health benefits and helps stay off colds and flu AND, it being a simple sugar it is easy to digest/better for you/blah, blah, blah; however, for the sake of showing off a fun thing, I will show off my cute bird sugar cubes I tried to make today.   INSANELY fun and cute, huge mess, but you cant see them well in the picture.  I have some better food grade molds on my wish list and we will be trying this again. For today though I ended up using my sculpy molds..hehe.  Another tutorial completely.

There.  That job's done.

Now, I can talk about me!  let me see.  Not sure how many of you keep up with my facebook, but my neighbor's super old horse was hit by lightning and died last week.  That horse had to have been really old because I remember seeing it in the field even before I left home at 18 years old.  It had very bad feet and it rarely was standing up anymore.  I'm sure the lightning strike was a mercy killing on God's part.  "Just come home horsey!!!"  Anyway, I wondered what his name was.  I never knew him as anything but "that old horse" and even when the neighbor stopped by and told me the news he refereed to him as "that old gray horse of mine."  I started asking if anyone knew his name.  My sick sense of humor was wishing it was something completely inappropriate like Lightning.  His name was Jack.  How original was that?  Especially since the guy who owned him is also named Jack.  Meh.  Lightning would have been WAY funnier.

My hot water heater split and I had a deluge of water flood the downstairs.  Dean is once again battling mold on his wall as I try to get it dry again.  A friend had an old hot water heater in their milk house and gave it to us for free, though it only has 1 working element.  I am happy with mostly warm showers.  We really need to get that other element before we ruin this one too.  Oddly, my sister's hot water heater died this morning.  It must be some kind of epidemic hot water heater virus or something.  Some good news is, a customer had some furnace work done by this semi-retired guy who had been running his own heating and cooling business his whole life.  Now that he is semi-retired, he specializes in reusing upgraded furnaces and air conditioners from people who are simply upgrading/remodeling/ect.  Our gas furnace and central air won't be brand new, but it will be one hell of an upgrade from the crap we have.  All our new duct work will be repurposed as well.  The guy said none of it will leak, but it will not be pretty and Curt will have to sheet rock over the new stuff--big deal. Also, he is going to help us arrange the ductwork correctly so as to make the most out of our heating/cooling situation.  My dad did most of the work on the house himself with the help of the occasional buddy and there was usually beer involved.  I can only assume that not really knowing what he was doing/beer/buddies who didn't entirely know what they were doing/and beer had something to do with stuff being as it is.  Anyway, $700.00 is all I have to pay for the central air and upgraded furnace.  The guy will overhaul everything and make sure it is in working order and help us install it.  We do all the work with the walls and sheet rock and pipes--he supervises to make sure we do it right.  After that central air!!! Newer furnace!!!  We all know I have no issues whatsoever with reusing as long as it works and the central air will eliminate the moisture problems we have downstairs.  We paid the guy his money today and he will be bringing the stuff on Monday to get started.  YAY!

I got a new job.  This time I'm an actual employee that earns PTO and has 401K and insurance and everything!!!  Still work from home as a MT--training starts on Tuesday.

My dad, once again, got sick and would not allow any of us to take him to the doctor until he was vomiting blood and incoherent.  Finally, on Wednesday, my mom called the ambulance to come and pick him up.  He was furious with her.  I absolutely cannot understand why throwing up until your stomach bleeds is better than going to the doctor and getting fixed before it gets to that point.  I understand he is scared he will be put in a home, but behaving like this does not save him at all.  He was taken to Rodchester Hospital this time and is currently in the Critical Care Unit.  He has a touch of pneumonia and cellulitis and it seems he stubbed his toe and it looked broken.  He has pretty severe neuropathy so he didn't feel it, but now he has a foot injury which may not heal and he could be on the way to losing the other foot.  He was intubated and extremely drugged up so he would not fight, but I called his nurse earlier who said he had his tube out and was breathing on his own: however, he is on O2 and a Bi-PAP.   Tomorrow Mom and I will be going to Rodchester and I will be spending the night with her.  Rumor has it that they will not let him come home until he is well and there is a nurse that will come in at least once a week to monitor him and take his vitals.  Pretty much, he lost his right to have a say in his own care because he is a selfish putz.  There. 

I have baby bunnies!  Spellbunny has been so protective of her area lately and has been biting and growling all the time.  I kind of had gotten her somewhat under control by just making the kids follow the bunny rules of conduct, but this last week her biting was consistent.  I stopped a the pet store and bought some wood blocks flavored like corn for her to gnaw on thinking she was bored.  When I got to the pen, there was baby rabbits all willy-nilly in her hutch.  She had no attempt at a nest and her hutch as a wire bottom to sift out the poop so these poor little babies were absolutely uncomfortable and lost.  One baby was dead.  There are 6 others.  I did not know she was pregnant.  When she had gotten out of her pen, it was way more than 30 days ago, so she did not get pregnant then.  I can only assume it happened when Coco pushed out of his summer cage that 5 minutes that they were both out at once.  GAH!  I never saw it happen!  I SUCK!!!  I feel so rotten.  So anyway, I got them moved in the house in a big kennel with a nest I lined with fiberfill.  I have used fiberfill for countless babies over the years and I had never had a problem, but last night while Spell was eating I looked at the babies and one had his leg tangled in the fiberfill and the circulation was cut completely off.  The foot was swollen beyond crazy and the fiberfill was cutting into the leg which was bright red.  I got out some scissors and I cut his little leg free.  Poor baby.  I kept saying over and over, "I'm sorry!!!!"  The swelling is down barely and the leg is still all farked up.  I can't imagine how much it hurts and I am so worried about infection.  I hug him a lot.  He's a tiny and gots lil' owies.  :( Again, I suck and guilt is dripping from my pores.  If these little ones survive me they will be champions.

Here is mama...notice the toilet paper nest in the background?  They have pine bedding today.  Cedar isn't good for them to be in contact with (what I had for the litter pans in the hutches) and the toilet paper soaked up pee instead of letting it drain down and keeping the babies dry.  I ended up going to the feed mill and getting horse bedding, which interestingly enough, is a finer and softer shaving than the Wal Mart bedding AND is 2$ cheaper for the bale. GAH!

Here is my little tiny club foot.  Only 2 days old.  Isn't he just the sweetest little thing?  Already at 3 days old today they have more fur than yesterday and they dig with their front feet.  Can't hear, can't walk around, can't see, but they can dig.  Awwww.