Michigan Herb Conference

Last week my girlfriend and I went to the Michigan Herb Conference, it was so nice seeing "green" after the long winter. I purchased a few new herbs, the tall pot is mojito mint perfect for summer mojito drinks, rose scented geranium and Irish moss.

In the moss I tucked in some spun-cotton mushrooms from the 1960's that were made in Germany. I purchased them from http://www.blumchen.com/. They have a lot of vintage and new goodies.

This was the welcoming display "Horseradish-what a kick!" Herb of the year.
I went to a lot of lectures from unusual herbs to making your own bent-wood trellis. All of them great.

And one craft class, making herbal garden fairies. This was the class sample.

This is the beginning of mine, I started with a seed head from last summers coneflower for the head, twig arms, and a wooden skewer for the body all bundled and tied with raffia. They gave us different dried herbs to used for the dress.

This is my fairy, with it's bay leaf wings and acorn cap. It needs a little more flowers in the skirt and sleeves and hopefully I will soon be able to get back to it.

They had beautiful displays set up, this is a garden party, with a "bee skip" candle holder.

Flower pot napkin holders and tea cup arrangements.

Another display was a vintage kitchen.

Porcelain basins

Canning equipment and canned goods.

Another lecture I went to was Creating your own herbal liqueurs. That was interesting. I actually thought I might learn something new to use with my natural fabric dying.

They auctioned off different herbal gardens, this one is a live salad bowl with wooden serving utensils. Pick the greens as needed and let it keep growing.