A Moment in Thyme

10/13/2026

10/13/2026

09/22/2026

Scented pelargoniums, often called scented geraniums, earn their place on the windowsill twice over: once as handsome plants and again as one of the most versatile flavoring herbs a cook can keep. Brush a leaf and you might catch rose, lemon, lime, mint, apple, or nutmeg, depending on the species, and that fragrance transfers beautifully into anything warm or sweet. The leaves are too textured to eat whole, so they work by infusion. Steep them in simple syrup, cream, or vinegar; bury them in a canister of sugar for a week; or line a cake pan with them before the batter goes in and lift them away before icing. Rose-scented varieties are the classic partner for berries, stone fruit, and dairy, which is exactly what the recipes below put to work.

This recipe comes to us from HSA member Henry Flowers.
Ingredients
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
0.3 cups fresh rose geranium leaves, packed

Steps
Make the simple syrup: In a saucepan, combine 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar over heat until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool.

Blend the base: In a food processor, blend 2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries, 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, and 0.3 cups fresh rose geranium leaves, packed until well mixed. Add the cooled simple syrup and mix well.

Chill: Refrigerate for four hours or overnight.

Churn: Pour into an ice cream maker and process until frozen, 15 to 20 minutes

Serve: Eat right away, or freeze for later use.

For more recipes, visit: https://loom.ly/0k4mN48

09/22/2026

Happy Fall!

Happy Fall 🍂

09/15/2026

Amen

09/13/2026

There's no such thing as pruning a hydrangea. There are two opposite rules, and one of them is wrong for your plant.

Some hydrangeas set next summer's buds in late summer, on the stems standing there right now. Others set them in spring, on growth that hasn't appeared yet.

Cut the first kind in March and you've taken off a year of flower buds. The plant leafs out fine. It just doesn't bloom.

That's the usual reason a healthy hydrangea goes years without flowers — not soil, not sun, not disease. Someone tidied it up at the wrong end of the calendar.

So the only question that matters is which kind you have.

🌿 Find yours, then cut:

- Bigleaf — mophead or flat lacecap flowers in pink, blue or purple, big glossy leaves. Sets buds on old stems. Cut right after it finishes flowering, before August.
- Oakleaf — cone flowers, oak-shaped leaves that turn burgundy, cinnamon bark that peels. Old stems too, and it rarely needs more than dead wood taken out.
- Panicle — cone flowers on rougher, smaller leaves, often grown as a small tree. Limelight and Quick Fire are these. Blooms on new growth, so cut in late winter, back by about a third.
- Smooth — white ball flowers that flop in the rain, soft heart-shaped leaves. Annabelle is the one everyone knows. New growth. Late winter, down to 12–18 inches from the ground.
- Reblooming bigleaf — Endless Summer and its relatives, bred to flower on both. Deadhead, pull the dead stems, leave the rest alone.

Dead wood is the exception to all of it. A stem with no green under the scratch can come out any month of the year.

The plant standing bare in March is already holding next summer. 🌱

09/11/2026

My dad handed me two clothespins. “This,” he said, “is the story of everything.”

In one hand: a clothespin from the 1960s. Solid hardwood, smooth from decades of use. It still works perfectly, some 60 years later.

In the other: a clothespin from 2025. Lighter, paler wood, brittle. The spring is thin and unstable. Marketed as “extra durable,” my dad just raised an eyebrow.

At first glance, it’s just two clothespins. But they tell a bigger story — the shift from durability to disposability, from craftsmanship to cost-cutting, from stewardship to constant consumption. This is planned obsolescence in action.

Products are designed to fail so we must keep buying. Slowly, subtly, they break. Frayed wires, cracked hinges, brittle springs. Not because we want more, but because the old was never built to last.

The costs are everywhere. Landfills overflow. Wallets empty. And maybe most quietly, our spirits grow accustomed to impermanence, to the idea that nothing is meant to endure.

What if this philosophy extends beyond objects? What if it shapes how we treat relationships, communities, homes, even the Earth — as temporary, replaceable, disposable?

It doesn’t have to be this way. That 1960s clothespin reminds us another path is possible. That we once made things to last, and we can again. That quality, care, and intention matter. That we can design for repair, for continuity, for meaning.

The story in my palm is about more than laundry. It’s about the choices we make — and the world they create.