WIP.

Apothecary Cabinet. Denise Cusack @2023.

​Apothecary Cabinet. Denise Cusack @2023. 

Spring and summer are filled with garden work. Autumn is a relief and recovery time. Late fall/early winter is for downtime and holiday at home. And the rest of winter is for seed starting, garden planning, writing, and, of course, art. I like to draw and work on living plants all summer long so that I can draw what is alive in my garden so I get a pretty good representation. I do work from photos of my own garden, but I like choosing my own plants. The fall and winter though, I always feel like drawing coziness, warmth, apothecaries, and the homey feeling of dried herbs filling the cabinets with jars of infusing herbs and spirits. There is something about the reflection of candles or winter light on a shelf filled with glass jars. It is funny, because I do not keep my herbs on shelves where the light hits them. I keep my herbs stored by date in bags in a dark and cold storage room with no windows, just for herbs. They store longer and keep their color, aroma, and taste much longer. I also grow a lot of herbs, so those little glass jars are not big enough to store my herbs, as I can have more than 20+ gallon bags of each and every herb from the garden, so they are stored by batch and date and type and first in, first out. But the romantic notion of clear glass and everything out in the kitchen by the open fire is lovely, if not impractical. So, I can dream a little, in my drawings, or those little tiny vials and jars and containers shining in the firelight, tucked into a cozy cabinet on a cold winter day. 

​Apothecary Cabinet & Still. Denise Cusack @2023. ​

How do you store your herbs? How do you inventory and track what you have?