Lavender: From Soil to Sachet, the six-week online course I'm currently taking, is not only interesting, it also includes little surprises--my instructor just sent me a care package filled with lavender sachets and organic culinary lavender.The first lesson covered the illustrious history of this uber herb. Unlike so many things, the more I learn about it, the more I like it. Lavender is a natural sedative, antidepressant, and insect repellent. The Romans regarded it as a symbol of cleanliness, and the British used it as a disinfectant and a pain reducer on the battlefields. Lavender's family, lamiaceae, includes the genus mentha (mint) and the genus nepeta (catnip).
I wish I had a lavender lesson every day instead of just once a week. In between lessons, I'm scratching the itch with a few good books--a practical guide to growing and using lavender, a beautiful coffee table book on the lavender fields of Provence, and an enjoyable memoir of a New York journalist who traded in her glamourous life in the Big Apple for a lavender farm in rural Texas, population 1,600. And you can guess how thrilled I was to find the latest issue of Hobby Farm Home in my mailbox--with lavender on the cover! It's a sign, I tell you.
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