Cutting Herb Stalks

Our first frost has come....a few weeks ago, actually.  Since writing this three days ago, our first SNOW has come, as well - I feel like winter is reaching out :-) -- and I am reaching back.  This stretch of time between September and March make up the cozy months, the knitting months....sometimes I think these are my favorite months of the year.  

But, it occurred to me, amid all my happy anticipation of wool and needles, that I should probably pay some kind of attention to my little garden patch. 

I asked around my baking group about how they cut back the garden for winter?  .....and how I should protect my beloved laurel plant against the winter cold? 

The Bay Laurel doesn't get to move inside with me and all that warm wool and hot cocoa, after all.... I mounded the base with extra soil, to protect the roots, per instructions from the baking group. 

I followed their further instructions on the herbs, and last weekend, I cut all the lavender and a third of the thyme....

....with a big bundle of sage.

But, I started noticing that there were still a few garden helpers living inside the sage plant --

spiders - lots of them down at the base.....

.....and one ladybug, curled up inside a leaf.

The truth is that they don't have much longer, but I couldn't bring myself to tear their home to the ground. Plus, there were spiders...... so, I cut some and I left some. That is almost cross-stitchable as my gardening credo.....I am, at heart, a lazy & arachnophobic gardener. 

Then I bundled the stalks together in smaller sections, and hung them from a convenient pole in the basement --- where Alistair hangs his bicycling gear.  He just came up the stairs and mentioned it, in fact:

Alistair:  Hey, I see you have branches of something hanging downstairs next to my biking stuff.  Can I move those somewhere for you? 

So diplomatic.  The 'translation' of that sentence would read a lot differently to anyone who speaks Alistairese. 

But, he moved them to a new pole in the basement for me....balanced off of an IKEA pantry shelf with a weight holding the pole down.  That was nice.....and I have a few weeks to decide where to put them once they're dry, now.    :-)