Lavender Fields Forever

Lavender is one of my favorite herbs, garden accents, colors and scents. I know it is cliché to say, but one of the items high on my “Bucket List” is to go to Provence to see the lavender fields. Photographs of the fields are beautiful, but I want to go and see them for myself.

I have a few lavender plants growing in my gardens. With the weather we have had this year they are some of the few plants that are doing well; I’m surprised, since they r really don’t like to be too wet.

As much as I like the lavender growing in the garden, this is the time of year that I harvest the flowers; just before they fully open. After gathering them, cutting the stems down to where the stems meet the bushier part of the plant, I bring them into the kitchen to sort the stems by height and bundle them into posies I sprinkle around the house. If I waited until the flowers open, my posies would leave a mess behind.

Several freshly cut bunches of lavender here and there give my house a subtlety sweet scent that staves off the stagnant air when we are between leaving windows open for fresh air to closing them tight against the mid-summer heat. I inhale the scent and close my eyes and imagine myself standing on a rise looking out over the rolling lavender fields of Provence.