The Art of Preserving Nature's Gifts

Because sometimes the best way to welcome winter is with flowers frozen in your cocktail glass

Not a how-to, but a glimpse into the rituals and rhythms of first frost in our Northern Arizona high-country garden.

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There’s a certain poetry in that first autumn frost.

Colors soften, the garden quiets for just a moment, and suddenly you realize the season has turned a page.

In our high-country Arizona garden, that shift can happen quickly (typically in the second half of October). One day sunflowers are beaming, the next morning their faces bow under a lace of silvery frost.

Rather than mourn the end, I’ve learned to savor it.

First frost is an invitation: to gather, to preserve, and to carry a little beauty with us into the quieter months ahead.

Soon our first frost is coming, but if we can shepherd the garden through these cold snaps, we’ll often continue harvesting well into November.

Because I invest so much time in the new kitchen garden raised beds and seed starts most years, I’m not about to let one chilly night cut things short. So I lean into the process: harvesting, tucking things in, preserving, and having fun with it.

All Tucked In

Oddly, that day when we finally expect our first frost is typically sun drenched and glorious. I have 6 large raised beds - designed and built by me and my husband about 4 years ago.

I start with the herb and flower harvest (I grow over 50 kinds—some familiar, some quirky like hyssop and lovage).

A few need immediate processing, most can simply hang to dry. Then come the hoops and frost cloth, clipped on with wooden clothes pins. Simple, low-tech, but it works.

Because everything is on drip irrigation, I don’t worry about access while the fabric is on. It’ll all come off before the first snow, folded and stowed until early spring - when, with luck, it helps me sneak in seeds a good 4–8 weeks ahead of schedule.

Before: Raised beds waiting for their frost covers… and one very dedicated helper (Ibis) checking things over. From a frost prep a couple of autumns back.

After: Tucked in snug for the night, waiting out the frost. Like a cozy quilt.

Summer on Ice

In the kitchen, I will chop basil, tarragon, and chives into pesto and herb butters, portioned into ice cube trays for winter soups and sauces.

And then, the most delicious part. I will gather edible flowers like borage and salvia, and freeze them into cocktail ice cubes. They’re imperfect, cloudy, and absolutely enchanting.

🍸Toss one into a sparkling water or a gin & tonic, and suddenly summer lingers just a little longer.

Summer’s Borage blossoms, frozen into tiny jewels for autumn cocktails. Cheers!

Fragrant Bundles

The rest of the herbs (bundled, labeled, and strung on a cord in my studio) fill the space with the most intoxicating scent.

They’ll hang for a few weeks before being tucked into jars and envelopes for winter use.

Harvest turned into art. The scent of the garden lingers here for weeks, a reminder that summer’s not gone, just transformed.

First frost doesn’t have to mean the end of the season’s joy.

It’s a chance to celebrate what the garden gave, and to tuck bits of it away - whether in jars, tucked under frost cloth, or glittering inside ice cubes - to remind us of the beauty the earth offered.

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Here’s to frost kissed mornings and flower-filled ice cubes in your evening cocktail! 🍸

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With contentment & possibility,

P.S. Will you try the flower ice cubes? (Suggestions on how to make the ice freeze less cloudy are always welcome). Or do you have your own fun frost-day ritual? Share your ideas, I’d love to be inspired by them!!