Practical Life in our Day: Mint

We are trying to be good stewards of the earth, while not letting the earth get in the way of the most important gift of human beings: relationship.

It is even better when the two are the same thing :)

In this case, we are growing mint in our living room. As it grows long, we trim it, hang it to dry, grind it up and make tea... and more... While it is drying (upside down so the oils flow back into the leaves, maximizing their potential), we have a beautiful decoration that makes our home, truly homey. Comforting. And there is a natural inclination towards being with one another in a cozy, homey home ;)

Once it is fully dried, we spend time together pulling the leaves off into a large bowl (easier to collect everything then, transfer in small quantities to the mortar and pestle). I bought a set of 3 of these on Amazon years back (affiliate link there) that have been simply fantastic!

The mint leaves are stored in a jar to use for making tea, or to add to our homemade toothpaste or anywhere else we need some mint flavoring.

That leaves the stems - which are fine for adding to the composting, but well, we have an interesting set up with our apartment management and mouse-traps get pricey when management does little to alleviate the issue. But fresh mint keeps them away.

My mother will cringe when she reads that I tuck these stems in all the places where the mice have been spotted. Despite her cringing, I can confidently report success (so far!) - ice-free and my home smells so nice! We freshen them up when we harvest new mint and THEN we compost the stems. There may be other purposes for them, but that is what we do for now :)

mint, dried, laying on the stove
because our counters were full at the time. 

grinding mint leaves with mortar and pestle