Too Much Mint

From a rant, to a garden, to a long weekend project. It was time to seriously prune the mint or we would have a mass of brown twigs without the mass of juicy green leaves. If you don’t keep it cut back, it ends up being a useless, ugly mess. This afternoon, my first discovery was that our mint patch had become a habitat with its own predator.

This is why it is good to use organic pesticides. If I had sprayed the aphids with harsher chemicals than Neem Oil, this little cutie wouldn’t be prowling the mint for us.

We had a lot of mint to use. First, I added mint flowers to some grocery story mums.

Interesting texture and a lovely scent.

Next, to the kitchen. Mint jelly time! Two batches.

On the left is mint jelly made with white wine, rosemary and lemon juice from Epicurious. I’m guessing that would be good on some grilled lamb.  On the right is a Mojito Jelly recipe I made up. I added a touch of green food coloring to the Mojito one so we can tell them apart. That one will go into some dessert recipe I haven’t yet thought up.

After weeding the mint patch and cropping it back to a better shape, cooking and cleaning up, it was time to relax.

Refreshing! I had some leftover ingredients from the Mojito Jelly. Seemed logical.

Even with all the creative projects, there was still a lot of mint left. We ended up with the sweetest smelling yard waste dumpster in the area.