Wednesdays have become on of my favorite days of the week. Baby goes to spend the day at his grandmothers house so I have the day off. I sleep in (always!) even though sleeping in now means getting up at 7 or 8am instead of 9 or 10. I wake up everyday now at 530am almost right to the minute. Its never varied by more than a minute or two either way. Wednesdays now mean sleeping in, a long,hot leisurely shower, brunch with the boys and then usually heading out the door to go grocery shopping. The kiddos all have some $$ burning holes in their pockets so I think today we will head out to the land o'Target and its surrounding strip malls.

UPS delivered my order last night not to long after I posted about it. The amber smells divine and I was able to brew up my very first batch of oatstraw infusion. Boy, a pound of oatstraw is a BIG bag of it. Its a beautiful light green color and it smells of hay and sunshine. The recipe I have for infusing it calls for 1oz of straw, I measured it out on our little postal scale and that comes out to just under 1 cup of it by volume. Thats ALOT. I read on a message board that others find it alittle intense and its ok to cut back on the amount of herb. I will try using less next time and seeing what happens.

I brewed it up and it made a quart jar full of golden-green brew that smells like hay and sunshine. Tastes like it too, all sunshine and grass and earth with a bare hint of oatmeal feel in my mouth. Its good. I like it. It reminds me of the liquid chlorophyll that we used to take 10 years ago when I first was learning about nutrition and herbal health. It reminds me of my friends in our very first homeschool co-op. Those memories are bitter-sweet. We learned alot. We made some really good friendships, friendships that have lasted almost 10 years. We had good times and we had alot of bad times. It was funny how all of those memories came washing back over me last night as the smell of the herb steamed up out of the jar.

I found a place online where I can buy seeds to sow my own little garden plot of oats in the spring! I'm thinking since I live right in the middle of farming country, I will be able to find a local place to buy them. If not, I'll get them off the internet along with some others. I missed not having a vegetable garden this year. Next spring I'm going to be planting veggies, culinary herbs, medicinal herbs and a small patch of oats!