Hello! It's great to see you here at our new meeting place. It's always nice to find like-minded people. I bet you're a plant-lover too. Did you see the story on oregano in the last issue? I loved that story! And the one on moles (sauces, not rodents) had some amazing recipes.

Let me introduce myself! I'm Marci O'Brien, art director for The Herb Companion. I met Herby back in 2000. For the last 4 years, I've been a telecommuter from my home in Colorado, and working with some far-flung editors means I work in four time zones. How many hardiness zones would that be?

My gardening background started when I was born into an Ohio farm family. I grew up exploring the farms and kitchen gardens of my extended family in Indiana and Michigan. I'll tell you more about those places in future posts.

I've always had a garden of some sort, although some have been sad little neglected things. This year I have some herbs going in a rock garden at the top of my yard, most of which have hung on under a few inches of snow this winter. My new passion for plants is in introducing them to my daughter. She's 3 right now and she loves to touch a leaf then smell its scent on her little fingers. "Smell, Mama. So nice!" She knows she can only taste the ones Mama says are safe. All winter long, she has gone on walks with her dad and brought me back a few leaves of lemon sage, so proud of her tasty gift.

My husband and I love to cook, too. So I'll be posting some recipes here for you to try. I would love it if you would share your favorites with me, too.

Spring is almost here! Let's enjoy it together this year.

Hello, and welcome to my new blog, Health Matters. I'm Amy Mayfield, editor of Herbs for Health, sister publication of The Herb Companion. In this blog, I'll write about medicinal herbs, healthy foods and interesting tidbits related to health and natural medicine. I plan to include lots of recipes that I hope will inspire you to try new things at home. I'll also talk about great resource books I find helpful and new scientific research I come across.

A little about me: I've been working for Herbs for Health for almost nine years. I telecommute from my home office in beautiful, rainy Corvallis, Oregon, home of Oregon State University. I've been married for seven years (we met in college at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California) and we have two incredible kids, a son who is almost 5, whom we adopted at birth here in Oregon and a daughter who is 20 months old. We all traveled to Taiwan to adopt her in March 2007.

When I'm not editing and taking care of my kids, I enjoy exercising (I'm a regular at our local Jazzercise center), scrapbooking, cooking and keeping in touch with my friends and family who are scattered from coast to coast. I'm also becoming more and more interested in local eating and subscribe to a community-supported agriculture program through Gathering Together Farm (www.GatheringTogetherFarm.com).

Thanks for checking out my blog!

Welcome to My Herbal Space; glad you stopped by. I'm the editor of The Herb Companion magazine. Along with my fellow Herb Companion bloggers (KC, Marci, Amy and Allison), I work with knowledgeable and talented contributors to create a magazine we hope you will use and enjoy. Here on HerbCompanion.com, I hope to be less "editor" and more friend, sister and neighbor ... and I'm looking forward to sharing ideas, plans, successes and even disappointments about the herbal happenings in our gardens and kitchens.

If you've managed to wind up here accidentally--maybe by tripping through a link on some other website--I hope you'll stay a while and sample what we (and the herbs) have to offer. Like to cook? You'll find our site and magazine chock-full of delicious recipes--many from some of America's top chefs, who use herbs for maximum flavor. If gardening is your favorite way to relax, you'll find dozens of unique design ideas, solutions for common gardening problems, and expert advice on how to grow most any herb. Most of us know that herbs make us feel good: one whiff of lavender or basil can make everyday stresses seem to vanish. But did you know that many of these simple plants also have the power to heal? Our community of herbal contributors regularly provides the latest research on using herbs for your best health, and you can read it all here.

My own exploration of herbs began 20-some years ago, when I planted my first garden--a parsley patch in a window box outside my center city apartment. Like most people, I came to herbs through cooking ... then discovered they offer so much more. Over time, I found that I loved not only their flavors, but also the multitude of fragrances, colors, textures and forms they brought to my garden and my cooking. I discovered the healing aspects of herbs "through the back door," you could say (truly, the back door of the 1780 house I once lived in!).  I wanted to plant a period garden, one similar to what the house's original owners might have planted. Reading dozens of old gardening books and visiting historic sites near me, I learned that many of those plants would have been medicinal herbs: horehound, elecampane, calendula and rhubarb, to name just a few. So I planted them, got to know them, then made my own healing teas and salves ... and found myself more enchanted than ever by these fascinating plants.

Wherever you happen to be in your own personal journey with herbs--even if your interest is simply to find a recipe for tonight's dinner--we invite you to visit often, join our community, and see how herbs can make your world a better place. (Next time you visit, I'll have something to report about my spring planting; the soil is a little too wet and cold just yet, but in a few short weeks, I'll be starting a big, new project ... stay tuned.)

Til then,

Vicki