mint | little home by hand

The first local strawberries of the year, bought at today’s farmer’s market.

I had a craving for chocolate covered strawberries, so we made chocolate fondue and enjoyed every bite.

I’ve been busy potting and transplanting plants on my balcony, where finally there is some growth. My own strawberries will be carrying fruit soon:

These are conventional strawberries but just today my mom gave me some wild strawberry plants from her garden. I love the special taste of wild strawberries and it will be interesting to see how well they do in a container compaired to the ordinary ones.
There’s also mint, which I love…I cannot wait to have fresh mint tea and alongside my trusty and aromatic italian mint I bought some chocolate and orange mint this year. I’m also trying out some new (to me) plants like Anise Hyssop and Monarda this year.

In addition to the peppers and tomatoes, who are being hardened off this weekend, I’m growning some regional veggies like kohlrabi and broccoli this year.

Aside from having homegrown food to eat, getting my hands dirty planting and growing things in the fresh wind is just the kind of work that keeps me healthy and happy, when too much computer work has made me antsy.
Not that I don’t like my computer work…I’m happy with my photo editing and blogreading and such, as long as I can balance it with physical work.
And to change the topic completely onto something computer related: Now that I own a camera that can do video and after being involved in some video projects at work and with friends, I’m completely excited to try making and editing videos. I’ve spent a couple of hours trying out the function as well as editing the video in Photoshop (yes, you can actually edit video files in Photoshop!) and researching cutting software. Turns out there’s no freeware out there which works with the kind of files my camera produces (bummer!) so I’ll probably need to buy software for cutting. I’ll keep y’all updated…expect some cat and pony videos as my first tries 🙂

We’ve been having temperatures below -10°C for a week now and I’m a bit worried about the mints and strawberries and other plants on my balcony.
On the other hand, the weather has provided some stunning sunrises.

I get up early at the weekend as well (as in “way before sunrise”-early) to do some research and work (more on that very soon!) and I love to watch the sky and the room grow light and the colors changing.

My seeds have arrived this week and I can’t wait to get some started! I brought in some mint cuttings during christmas and surprisingly it’s thriving inside, having grown from bare root and two leaves to this:

Which means that I’ll have mint this year even if the outdoor plants don’t make it. This is a peppermint from the south of Italy, which a friend gave me and which smells heavenly in summer, so I would have hated to lose it.