The Daily: 31 May 2026

The heat promised for last week failed to materialize. It never got much above 60°F, and it was rainy and windy most every day. I still have tomatoes in the guest bedroom, chiles in the dubious bathtub, and lots of tender herbs and flowers in the basement under grow lights. I have not planted the cucumbers and summer squash. I have not had room to start the winter squash and sunflowers indoors because spring is still covering every surface in the basement workroom. I have managed to secure the front porch against rodents with a combination of chicken wire, landscape fabric and many bags of pea gravel. I also filled the outdoor pots with compost and some hardy annuals. But tomorrow is June and I haven’t even really turned the garden beds yet.

So this week I must plant stuff. If it doesn’t get started now, it won’t mature into food before the first frost in September. And some things need to go in the ground if they’re going to live at all, especially the tomatoes, because they’re getting root-bound in the seed-starting paper pots. They are now about a foot tall with spindly stalks and maybe a dozen leaves on each plant. Several are bent and curling because the vines have no support and are too thin to hold up the leaves. Not at all healthy proportions. They really need sun and heat.

Fortunately, there are no more potential frosts in the 10-day forecast, and the lows are just barely below 50°. As these lows usually don’t last more than a couple hours, I might be able to move the plants out under cover by midweek to harden them and then plant out next weekend. The seeds are a more difficult thing because the soil has to be above 65° for most of the veg to germinate. My raised beds do warm up quickly in the sunshine… but it’s supposed to rain for much of the week. So I don’t know what to do about that. Not even black landscape fabric can warm up a bed if there is no sun.

This lingering cold, grey weather has definitely moved into unusual territory. Long-time Vermonters are starting to comment on the cold. People are getting edgy about the swollen rivers. Nobody has been able to plant corn, though the hay meadows are probably doing well, given what I have for grass.

But today is the Full Flower Moon. And tomorrow is June! The solstice is in a few weeks. The days are no longer noticeably lengthening. This is the height of the sun’s strength. I even have a note in my calendar saying that the season of Midsummer begins this week. Not that my calendar directs the weather… but it is tuned to conditions in the past. So this lingering wet spring is strange. And I am leaning toward refusing to acknowledge it. I am simply going to forge ahead with the growing season. Maybe like a rain dance brings cool showers, my sun dance will bring the warmth. In any case, it is time to start Midsummer, or it will be over before it is begun…

Well, that might be hyperbole. Because Midsummer is the longest of my seasons. It lasts from whenever I think Beltaine, or early summer, is over — usually after Mother’s Day — until late in July when the blueberries are coming ripe, indicating a shift to cooler temperatures and shorter days on the near horizon. The actual midpoint of summer comes at the solstice when the sun’s apparent path begins to head in the opposite direction and the days begin growing shorter, gradually at first and then rapidly as the season draws to a close. But the weeks on either side of the solstice are a time of little change, neither in day-length nor weather. This is the time of the doldrums. The Dog Days begin not long after the solstice.

However, Midsummer is the height of the growing season. So there is constant change in the garden. The green world is rushing to absorb all the sunlight it can in these long days and store it all for the shorter and darker days ahead. It is also the time of long hours of hard work in the garden and on the farm. There may still be planting most years, and planting season has barely begun this year in my part of the world. But there is a shift to cultivation and harvest in the Midsummer weeks. Every day, there are weeds to pull and watering cans to haul. Much of the grain, hay, early veg and pit fruit harvest will happen in the eight weeks of Midsummer. Garlic will be pulled, cured in the hot sun, and braided into ropes for fall and winter storage. Strawberries will bloom, set fruit and be mostly done with their growing season by July. Raspberries will be done before Lughnasadh. Asparagus season is already over… sadly. And once the heat sets in, the season of spring greens for the salad bowl will end as well. Leaf lettuces, arugula and mizuna, and most spinaches will bolt into seed when the temperatures climb above 80°F.

Still, there will be little need to cook for a long while. I can go for weeks eating a bowl of oatmeal in the morning and whatever fresh produce is coming out of the garden in the evening served with bread and perhaps some toasted nuts or hummus. There is some need to store berries and whatever veg I can’t eat in a few days. But I try to plant successively, a little at a time, so that doesn’t happen. I plan for a stream of harvests, none of which is more than I can manage. I don’t store much of the early veg. Much of it just doesn’t store well in summer heat, for one thing. But I am also reluctant to go to the trouble of heating up the kitchen so I can roast and blanch roots and peas for the freezer when I can just eat what is done now and plant more later in the summer for storage. I also don’t turn as much fruit into preserves as I once did. This is partly because my garden has changed and doesn’t produce as much of a berry glut. But it’s also because I live alone now and simply can’t eat that much jam. I like a few teaspoons of the stuff every now and again, but not pint jars overflowing the jelly cabinet. That might make a lovely image, but then you have to clean out what you didn’t use… and that’s not at all lovely.

With the warm days comes more activity on the animal side of the farm as well. It’s shearing season, followed by all the smelly and fiddly work of cleaning, drying, carding, and dyeing the wool. The ruminants are usually weaned by now, and if you want goat or sheep milk (and you do!), now is the time of frequent milking. If you have a dairy cow with a spring calf, she might be producing so much milk in these next few weeks of nutritious grass-eating, that despite nursing, you’ll probably need to milk her, maybe more than once a day. And much of this milk needs to be processed into something you can store for more than a couple weeks. So this is butter, cheese and ice-cream making season.

Chickens are also highly productive at Midsummer. There will likely be more than one egg a day from each of your layers; and if you have a rooster, expect at least one of your hens to go broody. In fact, this time of year that can happen even without a rooster. (Hope springs eternal…) If you have larger birds like geese or turkeys (or, god help you, Guinea hens), then there will be clutches of enormous eggs from each hen — of which you’ll probably be able to sneak a few for brunch — but most will be turning into a precarious circus of small balls of peeping downy fluff in the coming weeks.

So there is a lot to do generally, but Midsummer is the height of activity in the herb garden. The entire mint family — from rosemary to peppermint — should have their leaves gathered before the solstice. Most of these plants lose their volatile oils later in the summer, and the carrot family — dill, parsley, chervil, cilantro and so on — just run to seed when it gets hot. In any case, like all leaves, young and tender is better than old and fibrous. Gather the leaves in the morning, if you can, but after any dew has dried. This is when the plant has the most moisture in its leaves and stems, and any abuse you deal out to the plant will be more easily forgiven in the cool of the morning than in the glaring heat of the day. Don’t make the mistake of harvesting wet herbs though. They just rot.

It’s best to use most herbs without washing them, but this isn’t always practical if you have animals or if you garden in the city. So wash them like you would lettuce. Fill a bowl with cold water. Dunk the whole stem into the bowl and swirl it around. Lift the stem out and let it dry on a wire rack covered with a thin, lint-free towel. For some things that grow close to the ground or have particularly tacky or hairy leaves, you may need to rinse more than once to remove all the dirt. This is fine, but start each round of rinsing with a fresh bowl of water; don’t dunk in dirty water.

The thin, fine-textured leaves of dill and fennel can be dried on a paper towel at room temperature. I put them in the oven without the oven on, just to keep them clean and out of the way. It takes a day or two. More often I mince these herbs, gently stir them into softened butter, and freeze the herb butter into serving-sized cubes. I found an old-fashioned ice cube tray that makes one inch cubes for cocktails, which is also a perfect size for herb butter servings. These thin herbs can also be freeze-dried, particularly if your freezer is fairly empty (as it should be in the summer) and your climate is fairly dry. To freeze-dry these thin herbs, snip the leaves off the stems and spread them on a parchment-lined baking sheet in a single layer with plenty of space around all the leaves. Cover with a thin towel, then put the pan in the freezer. They are done when the leaves are brittle. It takes a couple days, but if the leaves are still just frozen and not visibly desiccated by the end of a week, then your freezer is too humid for this to work even on the tiny leaves. I had success with this in New Mexico. But I have lost quite a lot of dill-weed trying to dry it in this fashion in New England, so I don’t do it anymore.

Resinous leaves and the buds of lavender can also go into herb butters or be used to flavor oils and vinegars, and they freeze-dry well also. But this isn’t necessary as they are more easily dried in the dehydrator on its lowest setting. I keep the whole dehydrator covered with a thin towel so moisture can escape but sunlight doesn’t break down the plant materials. Most of the time, I put whole stems on the drying tray, usually without washing the plant. It takes a day or so for a dehydrator full of plants to desiccate the oreganos, mints, basil and flat-leaf parsley. (Don’t bother drying curly parsley; it’s tasteless.) Sage, savory, thyme and rosemary can take longer, so if I have a lot of these, I strip them off the stem first to reduce the plant material in the dehydrator. Herb leaves are sufficiently dry for storage when they are light and rather brittle. They should fracture easily. But they should also be brightly colored and full of scent. If they’ve gone dark or musty, it’s likely they have either rotted or just lost most of their volatiles and are now nothing but flavorless husks.

When dry, I strip the leaves off of the stems and store them in glass jars in a dark, dry, cool place. The bigger leaves get broken into small pieces, but this usually happens naturally as I’m pulling them off the stem. I don’t have to grind or mince most herbs until I use them — except for sage. That one most often gets ground into a powder before I dump it into its canister.

Roots of mallow, angelica and horseradish should be dug around the same time you harvest potatoes, for the same reasons. This is when the root has stored enough sugars and nutrients to be its most potent but the plant hasn’t yet considered it time to put on thick and tough skin around the roots to protect itself from winter. If you grow these plants as annuals, you can dig up the whole plant. If, like me, you grow them as perennials, then keep them planted in loose soil so you can gently lift them in July, cut off a few of the roots and then quickly replant the remainder of the plant. It’s best to do this on a cloudy or lightly rainy day to keep the roots from drying out. I also keep a barrow of water on hand to let the roots soak as I select the ones I want to harvest. Then, after replanting, I dump the water on the disturbed soil to ease the plant back into its home.

If you want leaves from dill, cilantro, fennel and so on, then gather them before the solstice. But if you want the seeds that are staples in preserving all those late-summer pickles, then this happens after the solstice. You can harvest seeds at any time of the day and really in any kind of weather, though dry is better than wet simply because it’s less mess. But you want to wait until the seeds are bulging and fat, almost ready to drop off the plant. This is when they are ripe. They will have hard shells, strong color and scent, and will come free of the stem with a light brush of your hand. In New Mexico, when the majority of the seeds were ripe on a plant, I just cut the whole plant and hung it upside down inside a paper sack, letting the seeds dry and fall into the sack. I might be able to do that in drought years here in New England, but it’s more usual for me to brush the seeds off the plant onto a tray that will go into the oven or the dehydrator. I don’t wash the seeds — because you just lose them down the drain more often than not — so I make sure to grow them where they are unaffected by animals and car exhaust. If you need to wash your seeds, then use a colander with as fine a mesh as you can find, or perhaps cheese cloth, though I imagine many of the seeds would get stuck in that.

I don’t use many herbs medicinally. Chamomile and lavender tea at bedtime, mint tea for stomach upset, a weak valerian root tincture when the insomnia gets bad, and that’s about it. I used to use raspberry leaf when I had feminine issues to worry about. I use mallow root and lavender buds in creams, and I use soapwort as a mild hand soap after gardening. I went through a soap-making phase a while ago, but that’s a time-intensive mess that needs its own space and tool set. So I haven’t done it for a while. For the same reasons, and because I can readily buy organic oils locally at the co-op or online at Bulk Apothecary, I don’t make essential oils. But then I don’t heavily use essential oils either. I add a few drops of cedar and lavender to the washing machine when washing the bed linens, and I keep a small cabinet of bottled scents for potpourri, which I do make. Or, more accurately, I gather some likely looking plant materials, dry it all as needed, and then drip a bit of essential oil on the mix when I set it out. This has the advantage of not requiring fixatives, most of which (like orris root) are expensive and not altogether non-toxic. It also means that I can use the same bowl of plant stuff for many weeks, refreshing or even changing the scent as the mood takes me.

I do grow some medicinal herbs, mostly as insurance, a library of pharma-free medicine for the future. I make witch hazel tincture from my own plants to keep the smaller varicose veins under control, and I regularly use tea tree and thyme oils as topical astringents. But I grow more than I use — because I’m not sure that many work as billed, and for those that are verifiably potent, I’m not sure I have the tools or skills to use them safely. Still, I’ve planted many patches of wild quinine, Culver’s root, echinacea, eyebright, feverfew and St John’s wort. I grow motherwort, a kind of mint that is exactly what it sounds like. I’ve always grown comfrey and sometimes have used it as a poultice on inflamed bug bites, bruises and arthritis. I have black cohosh growing under the cedars for a time when that might be the only way to calm the arrhythmia or cool the hot flashes. Similarly, I plan to grow white willow for the arthritis and general anti-inflammatory needs. But those aren’t herbs, I suppose.

I do grow many herbs for their scent in the garden, and some for their flowers or pretty forms — though, to be honest, most herbs are sort of raggedy and weedy. Even so, many are favorites of pollinators, and several are even excellent bug deterrents. I used to grow santolina in New Mexico as a general bug deterrent in the garden. It also has cheery yellow button flowers in the summer, and these dry into perfect wreath-making material, thought the scent tends to fade with drying. The southernwood branch of the artemisia family works the same way in the garden but will also keep its scent when dry for many months. I tend to agree with the bugs though — that mothball scent is unpleasant. Fortunately, lemon balm and the other citrus-scented plants annoy most biting bugs, yet don’t annoy me and also provide flowers for moths, butterflies and bees.

Monarda is one of the prettiest herbs and is a powerhouse of a pollinator attractor. One of its other names is bee-balm, but swarms of all sorts of flying critters surround this plant when it’s in bloom. It also blooms in the early summer, a time that not many other plants are putting out blossoms. As one of the mints, monarda will spread, but it’s not as aggressive. In fact, I find that I have to dig it up and replant it every few years because the center of the patch will die back leaving a donut hole in the middle of the garden. Also, as a mint, monarda has strongly scented oils in its tissues. Its natural scent is somewhat like a cross between mint and lemon with a hint of something sweetly floral like jasmine. But it’s also been bred to produce a rose scent that is stronger and longer-lasting than most roses. In fact, when you buy rose scent, it is more likely derived from monarda or the rose-scented geraniums than actual roses.

My favorite herb, and the one that seems to be the favorite of all the pollinators, is agastache. It is another mint with an amazing scent. It can light up the whole property with anice-like aroma and all the delightful flying beasties who are drawn to such strong scents. Its flowers come in an array of colors and arrangements. Most are large feathery plants with grey-green leaves and stems surmounted by stalks covered in sage-like flowers in outlandish shades of peach and terra cotta and tangerine, hot pink and cool lavender and electric blue. Agastaches are North American natives, but they are commonly named after a Mediterranean wild herb, hyssop (which is another essential in my garden). Agastache is no relative of hyssop and doesn’t look or smell similar, so I’m not sure why it’s called anise-hyssop. I suppose that might have something to do with the similar use humans have made of both plants. Since both have astringent properties and charming scents, both have been used in asperging sacred spaces. In asperging, bound bundles of leaves and flowers are dipped in holy water and then carried about the perimeter of a sanctuary, spritzing the cleansing water all about the space. North American Natives used agastache and sweetgrass; Mediterranean peoples used hyssop and rosemary. But the ritual act and significance were the same.

I also have a weakness for mulleins and the inula family of sunflowers (that which includes compass-flower, sunchokes and perennial sunflowers). I love the extravagant leaves and huge proportions. All of these plants are big, buxom, and as golden as a midsummer sunrise. Mullein leaves grow in huge and hairy greyish-green rosettes with central six-foot spikes of yellow flowers that draw all sorts of pollinators. Later in the year, the dried stalks can be dipped in wax or tallow and used as torches, leading to their folk name, hag candles. There are also cultivated mulleins that are smaller and less hairy and that have flower-spikes that resemble delphiniums, but in a multitude of warm colors (and without the poison of the aconites…). But they just don’t have the self-assurance of a hag candle. And as far as self-assurance goes, the inula called elecampane is about my favorite plant to firmly anchor the back of the herb bed. Its leaves are magnificently, tropically proportioned and it can reach ten feet tall in a season, sending cheery yellow sunflowers, butterfly favorites, soaring above the garden. Like other prairie plants with deep tap-roots, its leaves make great compost tea, without the cesspit stink of the comfreys, and the whole plant becomes nutritious compost at the end of the growing season.

I grow some garden herbs just for scent. Mignonette, meadowsweet, sweet woodruff, sweetgrass, and yellow bedstraw are all fairly non-descript plants with unassuming blooms, though they have their uses as flavoring and dye plants. But they give off intoxicating scents — and there is really no equivalent for any of them. Imagine sugar cookies mixed with new lavender buds mixed with the pure green scent of spring. That’s sweet woodruff. Meadowsweet smells like a flower-filled clover meadow after a summer rain shower. Mignonette, or reseda odorata, is a truly ugly little weed that puts out waves of scent like a bean-laden vanilla orchid warming under dappled tropical sunshine. Only, maybe a thousand times stronger. Heliotrope and sweet alyssum also both have a vanilla sweet scent and they have lovely flowers, but reseda is the plant I want growing by the porch for heady evening fragrance.

All of these flowers are blooming in Midsummer, some early, some later, but all of them could be found woven into the fairy garlands of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Truly, Shakespeare probably grew many of these herbs in his own garden. Few households had no herbs growing near the back door, even in the dirtiest and darkest alleys of London. Herbs are durable plants that thrive on neglect and reward the gardener in all sorts of ways. They can be propagated from mere slivers of a stem or root and, once established, will reproduce themselves for decades, sometimes centuries. There are echoes of colonial herb gardens still growing wild in New England where all other evidence of a homestead has been erased by time — over three hundred years after they were planted!

I’m an herb-garden zealot. The herb garden is the reason I tolerate the heat and weeds and biting insects of Midsummer. In fact, herbs not only make up for the discomfort of summer, they alleviate and diminish many of those discomforts. For example, not many weeds can out-compete the mint family, and not many mosquitos will visit a mint-draped garden, and nothing can beat mint as the essence of cool comfort. But all the herbs are delightful and interesting. And a few are truly indispensable all year round. I don’t think I could live without lavender and thyme.

I’m working on a Full Moon Tale for the Strawberry Moon that explores just that. What would be left to human culture absent the ubiquitous Midsummer blooms? What would our language, our cuisine, our emotional well-being be like if we follow the TechnoUtopian plan to pack all humans into sterile mega-cities and leave all other growth to the Re-wilds that only the rich would ever be able to experience? It is a dark tale, indeed…

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But that’s a Full Moon Tale for the future. Today is the Full Flower Moon, and it’s a Blue Flower Moon.

This year the Full Flower Moon is very near apogee, the furthest it strays from the Earth. So, it looks smallish, though you never have a closer moon hanging side-by-side for comparison. However, when the moon rises today, at 9:21pm in my part of the world, it will be almost 17 hours past the full — which happens at 4:45 this morning. And that substantial lag will have a bit more effect on the size we see. It may not be flattened, but it will be less brilliant than full. Still beautiful, I’m sure, as long as the clouds clear off.

But I don’t have anything to say on the fact that this is a blue moon. That you can have two full moons in a single month is a product of our unmoored calendar, not anything materially significant. A month should be one moon cycle. After all, that’s what the word means. But whatever… This is a blue moon, the second in May.

On the other hand, we are still embroiled in a war that we can’t escape — because there is no going back to the world before Trump broke it. So here is a Full Moon Tale for how I feel right now…

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The Mórrígan Quits

They will be coming to cross the river soon.

Slap.

I have nothing to tell them.

Slap.

I have nothing to give them.

Slap. 

I have nothing to do with them.

Slap. Slap. Slap.

She scrubbed the stubborn bloodstain between basalt and pumice, grumbling to herself. The stain wasn’t budging. Still as deep red and enormous as when she began. Covering nearly half of the shirt. 

Always the same.

Slap.

Never listen.

Slap.

Always more and more and more.

Slap. Slap. Slap.

Don’t they ever get tired of it? Isn’t repetition boring? Shouldn’t they find some other way to leave a mark on the world? Less about blood maybe?

She does not understand. Ages she has been at this. Go to the fords. Kneel at the river’s edge. Soak and slap and scrub the bloody garments until skin is wrinkled and red, muscle is seized up in pain. Deep bone ache in the hands and back.

Slap.

But the blood never comes out. Never even lessens. Bright red and pulsing, it flows into the garment as fast as she can force it out. River water is carmine with lifeblood, drawing all the foul creatures who would feast on warm-blood flesh if they could.

But she is not warm-blooded.

Slap.

Nothing I do has any impact.

Slap.

Why do I bother?

Slap.

Who cares?

Slap.

She wrings the river-water from the shirt, watching the red droplets swirl into the stream. She can wring this garment for days and the blood will still flow into the river. Because they just won’t stop.

Slap. Slap.

Stupid! (Slap.) Bloody! (Slap.) Humans!

Slap.

Nothing ever comes of all this blood. Nothing ever changes. Nobody ever wins. There is grief. Pain. Suffering. Loss. Death. And they never seem to notice that there are no benefits, never mind any good of a scale that might balance out all the evil destruction.

Slap.

So some tiny king can feel more powerful than his neighbor!

Slap.

When they all bloody well die in the end!

Slap.

And are utterly forgotten.

Slap.

This discord and strife over who has more cows. Or the prettiest concubine. Or the largest pile of worthless metal. All useless.

She grinds the bloodstain into the rock, scraping her knuckles and adding her own bright blood to the flow. 

Why do they want to hurt each other at all?

Slap.

No other animal is so stupid.

Slap.

What is wrong with these creatures!

Slap. Slap. Slap.

And it’s all the time now!

Slap.

Used to be I’d have winters off. Most weekends. Almost always got to sleep at night.

Slap.

There would be a skirmish. 

Slap.

A few dead foot soldiers.

Slap.

Maybe a dead hero.

Slap.

And then off to the pub.

Slap.

But now they push buttons and dozens of people on the other side of the world die horribly in seconds.

Slap.

And the dead aren’t even combatants! It’s women (slap), children (slap), elders (slap). And all the millions of non-humans caught in the wrong place.

She sees her teardrops on the stain.

At least someone is mourning.

Slap.

But no one is remembering.

Slap.

Nobody even knows his name.

Slap.

Nameless Soldier is the most common gravestone.

Slap.

And all the nameless dead who have no weapons.

Slap.

They are who I should be warning. They are the ones who die. They are the future bereft of a new generation. All so this squawking male can preen and thump his own chest.

Slap.

As if he had any hand in it.

Slap.

Rubs her raw hands.

Even I have more skin in the game.

Slap.

I’m tired of it. I want to quit. I want this to not be. Now.

She rocks back onto her heels and stares vacantly at the bloody mess she’s made.

What if I just didn’t? What if I just up and walked away? What would happen if nobody warns them of their folly?

At least I could be spared this madness.

After all, nobody ever told me to do this. And nobody ever listens to my warnings anyway. How can my presence possibly matter!

She shakes her head and goes back to cleaning.

The stain is growing. Now, nearly twice as big as it was when she began washing.

Fine!

She flings the shirt aside.

Fine!

She gets to her feet.

Fine!

She walks off. Still muttering.

They don’t need a war warning. They can just assume there is war. Everywhere. All the time.

They don’t need me to tell them that people will die. People are dying. Everywhere. All the time.

And they don’t need me to tell them that nothing will change.

And that there will be a new war tomorrow. Even while this one rages on with no prospect for conclusion.

They can’t even finish one thing before moving on to the next.

It’s all perpetual and self-reinforcing and never — bloody — ending.

Well, I’ll have no part of it.

They can wash their own bloody laundry.

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WANTED: Washerwoman at the fords for light cleaning, keening, and prognostication. No experience necessary. Fast-paced office. Flexible hours. Must have own transportation.

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©Elizabeth Anker 2026