Lavender

It's a great time to harvest lavender, although it depends a lot on your variety and where you live.
To make it a bit complicated, you have to pick it at the peak of the bloom to get the peak scent.  Hopefully it's on a cool day, because a hot day will result in lavender that has an intense aura of smell, but have less actual essential oils in the harvested flowers and stems themselves.

But whatevs.  It's pretty intense anyway, and the whole plant smells divine.  I have two or three plants in the back that are pretty similar, and a small plant in a pot in my house.  The potted lavender I actually grew from seed!  My brother's lady friend has one I sprouted from seed too, but it's a bit bigger.  Still, most of the harvested lavender that I have is actually from my sister.  The circle of sharing...

So what can you do with lavender?  Put the flowers in baked goods.  Make a tisane (which is a fancy word for tea that doesn't have any actual tea leaves in it, a soaking of herbs in hot water) out of any parts of the plant (allegedly good for headaches).  Dry it and put bits of the plant (or just the flowers for a more intense smell) in a sachet.  Dry it and grind the flowers up and add them to soap.  (Please grind them, otherwise the little flowers will turn brown in the soap and look like little mouse poops, and no one wants to shower with little mouse poops).

Here's a super basic tutorial I did on moth repellant sachets.  2008.  Hmmm.  Still good though.   You can use cedar chips, mint, and thyme in anti-moth recipes.  Fleas hate those herbs too!