A Year in Review - 2022

January - Herbs, Teas, and Gifts. Our specialty at The Rosemary House

 

February - Happy Valentine's Day Tea and Décor

March - Happy St. Paddy's Day!

April - Seeds arrive, and herb plants, too. Welcome Spring!

May - Penn State Graduation Day on Mother's Day. Congratulations, Angelica!

June - The Queen's Tea

July - Happy Fourth of July

August - Vacation in Tennessee, lunch at Graceland with the family.

September - the Fairy Festival after Labor Day

September - the Tea Festival in the gardens

October - Happy Halloween!

November - Holiday Teas begin after Thanksgiving

December - Merry Christmas! Family Time in Hershey.

Another memorable year - it's hard to pick just one photo to capture the experience of each month! Looking forward to 2023, a year full of herbs, teas, and adventure!

A Year in Review - 2021 - Happy New Year!

January is a cold month in Pennsylvania, with off and on snow, but the Camellia sinensis tea plant in the garden grows strong and tall through it all. January is also the planning month where Susanna and Nancy outline the next special events and activities for the new year.

February, the month where we highlight Valentine's Day, and showcase roses and chocolate and everything pink and red throughout the tea room. 

While March is of course for St. Patrick's Day and the luck of the Irish. This year we also included a program by Debbie Hartman of Thyme with Debbie featuring Flatbreads and Spreads. We will be contacting Debbie to see what she will offer in the new year. We enjoy her easygoing teaching style, her demonstration of special techniques, and of course the tasting of her delicious creations.

April marks the beginning of the growing season and a wide variety of herb plants line the porch waiting to be transported and transplanted to their new homes. It's always an exciting time when the plants arrive! In April, Susanna teaches a class on Herb Gardening, and there was a class on Springtime Tonics. Both educational and informative!

May Day is fun, secretly posting a basket of posies on the neighbor's door, waiting for them to be surprised with the colorful bouquet. Of course, Mother's Day Tea is another highlight for May. May is always a busy month as we celebrate National Herb Week. Parsley was the herb of the year for 2021. We are looking forward to celebrating the Viola, Violets, Pansy, and Pansies, the herb of the year for 2022.

We honor the Queen in June with our annual Queen's Tea celebrating her birthday, even though her true birthday is in April, the Queen deserves to celebrate twice! Weed walks, Making Herbal Medicine, and Growing a Healing Herb Garden were a few of the classes Susanna held during the busy month of June.

July was a family road trip to New England where we visited the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden and discovered the giant trolls, the keepers of the seeds constructed throughout the garden. Such fun! Trivia Night was popular in the tea room as an evening activity along with our Taking Tea and Tarot Reading.

August included a day trip to the Magic Garden in Philadelphia. Love the creativity found at this unique location on South Street. We're always on the lookout for sources of inspiration!

September is our festival month, first we celebrate the fairies, elves, wizards, and trolls that hide about the grounds. This is such fun, and you're invited to frolic with the fairies on September 10th and 11th, 2022. Check out the website closer to the date for a current list of activities.

The end of September we are the host site for the PA Tea Festival where all things tea are shared, from tea tastings to demonstrations, lectures, and small sessions, the world of tea offers much to discover. In 2022, we hope to see you Friday, Sept. 23rd and/or Saturday, Sept. 24th. Our tea festival website will keep you updates.

Halloween Teas are the theme in October. Spooky, and hauntingly delightful tea time treats are created for these special events. Of course, the gardens are decorated for the season, too.

The end of November is the beginning of the holiday tea time season with our annual holiday teas that kick off the day after Thanksgiving. Holiday tea cups, teapot napkin rings, and all things red and green make the tea room joyful and delightful until the end of the year.

December is a month of holiday teas in Sweet Remembrances, and plenty of shopping in the Rosemary House. At the end of the month, family and friends celebrated at a candlelight tea catered by Faith. Here's to a year of fabulous memories, and to another year of herbs and teas.

Thank you for all of our customers, friends really, that join in our activities at the tea room and in the gift shop. You inspire us to create more special events and 2022 promises to be a year full of unique opportunities! Happy New Year!

 

Wedded Bliss!

On this day, fifty years ago, Carolynn Elizabeth Reppert married Philip Connington Sears in serene Peace Church. Much love and happiness to the bride and groom as they celebrate their Golden Wedding Anniversary today.

They were originally planning a June wedding, but Uncle Sam presented Phil with his marching orders and a stint in Vietnam. Wanting to be married before he left, after a harried phone call to the mother of the bride, a family wedding was pulled together in two weeks, in between attending classes at Marietta College where they met. Carolynn made her wedding dress complete with a row of silken covered buttons cascading down her back with a lacy Spanish mantilla atop her head. (That curly head in the corner is the flower girl, Susanna)

Calling on friends and garden club members, the house turned into a florist shop days before the wedding. The flowers featured hundreds of daffodils, bridal veil spirea and lemon balm; from baskets full for her attendants to boutonnieres for the gents, and bunches tied gaily to the pews, with bouquets throughout the house, and surrounding the base of the cake, it was a daffodil wedding with the reception at home. Subsequent anniversaries have been celebrated in their home in New York on what they called 'Daffodil Sunday'. The beautiful cluster of long stemmed lilies that the blushing bride carried was later presented to her Grandmommy Reppert, unable to travel the distance from Reading, PA to Mechanicsburg.

 An overnight stop in Pittsburgh counted as their honeymoon as they headed back to Marietta, Ohio to finish classes and celebrations there. They have been blessed with two children, Jessica and Jacob, and are even more blessed with two beautiful grandchildren, Arielle and Gracie. 

Here's to the happy couple! 

Love, love, love, love.

Summer Supper on the Susquehanna

The Millersburg Ferry is the longest running double stern paddle wheeler, and the last known wooden ferry running in the United States. Although records only date back to 1817, it is suspected to have started running in the late 1700's. It is the only ferry service still in operation along the entire 464 mile Susquehanna River transporting people and/or cars across the river. What a piece of history we have in our backyard! 

In the 1980's, Katy Olinger, (pictured above with Nancy and Susanna) owned Katy's Kitchen, a charming tearoom in Millersburg, PA. Katy would lease the ferry for an evening and hold "Summer Suppers on the Susquehanna". This event included a buffet supper catered by Katy and her staff served aboard the ferry, followed by an entertaining herbal program presented by our mother, Bertha Reppert. 

As part of our ongoing celebrations for big 5-0 celebration year, one of the "Throwback" events we held was a "Summer Supper on the Susquehanna" where guests brought a chair and enjoyed a ferry boat ride, supper and then a lecture on Herbs of Pennsylvania shared by Susanna. It was a peaceful evening in July, a true step back in time.

                                           Tranquility on the serene Susquehanna River.

Herbal Books by Bertha

Bertha P. Reppert, our mother and the founder of The Rosemary House was a prolific writer. She wrote numerous articles for many magazines, a featured article in the New York Times about Saffron, and a weekly article on herbs for the small local paper.


Her first book, A Heritage of Herbs, was her bicentennial project and focuses on Native Herbs.  She was way ahead of her time on the concept of growing Native plants.

Next came Herbs with Confidence. This award wining book is a primer on growing herbs. It opens with the basic requirements for herb gardening and the use of herbs, while the back of the book features individual monographs on each culinary herb with how to grow it, how to use it and a recipe and craft for each herb. 

Growing your Herb Business was published by Storey Publications and is an encouraging "How-To" book for opening your shop, farm stand or booth. Since it was written pre-internet, it does not include info on web marketing. However, it is still considered a "must read" for those who aspire to own a little brick and mortar shop or stand.
 

The Brides Herbal features many creative ideas for weddings and showers with a romantic, sentimental herbal theme. Favors, Decorations, Bouquets and Recipes complete this fun book.

Mrs Reppert's TwelveMonth Herbal is a favorite of all who read it. Written as a daily journal of herb musings, uses, recipes, facts, lore and trivia this book can be picked up and read over and over.  Many folks tell us they add some of there special herb moments to each of the pages. It is a lovely inspiring herbal that can be picked up and enjoyed starting with any page of the book!

Thanks Mom, for this great legacy of herbal knowledge! 

Wedding Rice or, Happy Anniversary, Susanna & David!

One of the very first products we added to The Rosemary House shelves in 1968 was Wedding Rice. The beautiful artwork created for the wedding rice package was designed and hand drawn by artist Marj. Reppert and it features herbal symbolism and bridal themes as a frame for the wedding portrait of our maternal grandparents, Ottylie Elgert and Gustav Peplau, who were wed on February 12, 1907.

Wedding Rice was a mixture of white and pink rice (dyed pink by dear old dad) combined with Rose petals for Love and Rosemary for Remembrance. Rice was traditionally thrown and symbolizes fruitfulness, or fertility. 

        This mixture would be sold in bulk or packaged in individual small tulle favors for flower girls to pass out after the ceremony. Rice dyes nicely with food coloring and we would even create a custom color to match your wedding colors. When it was no longer popular to toss rice, we created "Bride Seed" which was a blend of Bird Seed, Rosemary and Rosebuds. Now we remember this product from day's gone by as a once clever idea but no longer popular at today's bridal celebrations.









Speaking of weddings, Happy 20th Anniversary to Susanna and David! A memorable wedding took place at Peace Church followed by a celebratory reception in the gardens of The Rosemary House and Sweet Remembrances. Stroll down memory lane with this blog post!

A Rosemary House Timeline

A Rosemary House Timeline

1968-2018

1968 – The doors opened with just one room of sparse inventory displayed on metal shelving purchased from the Sears and Roebuck Catalog.

1969 – MYOB was part of The Rosemary House, you may remember this phrase as “Mind Your Own Business” in this case it stood for My Own Business and it was a shop inside a shop, selling patches, love beads, tissue paper flowers.  This area has morphed over the years and is now our fairy corner.

1970 – Our goal was to add one product to the shelves monthly.  We introduced the Mint Mold candy molds in the shop and at the Hershey Dutch Days craft show.  Our herbal products and mint molds proved so popular Bertha Reppert went home and stayed up all night to type and mimeograph our first mail order catalog.

1976 – Bertha Reppert publishes her first book, A Heritage of Herbs. Her bi-centennial project, this book features native herbs.  Our best selling Roastmary achieves fame in a feature article in the Patriot News.

1979- Roastmary is sold to 38 states and 4 countries

1984 – Marj Reppert opens Rosemary Remembrances II, Jim Thorpe, PA

1985 – Susanna Reppert takes over as manager of The Rosemary House

1986 – Herbs with Confidence is printed

1989 – Roastmary has been sold in 47 states and 7 countries

1990 – Nancy Reppert opens Sweet Remembrances Tea Room

1993 – We begin our “Herbal Affair” event which quickly becomes our Fairy Festival.  We had 30 attendees and we were excited!

1994 – Bertha Reppert writes “Growing Your Herb Business” book published by Storey Publications

1996 – TwelveMonth Herbal is published and Bertha Reppert wins the herbal professional award by the International Herb Association

1999- Bertha Reppert gives lectures in 8 states but dies suddenly in June. 

2000 – Susanna Reppert completes her Herbal Therapeutics Course

2001 – Roastmary is sold in all 50 states and 14 countries

2005- The Rosemary House receives a face lift replacing all the original metal shelving and peg board.

2011 – Byron Reppert, the behind the scenes support man passes.

2013 – The Fairy Festival reaches attendance of 600.  Overwhelmed!

2017 – Pennsylvania Tea Festival begins, attendance 500. We were prepared!

2018 - Celebrating 50 years! And Continuing the Traditions!

Celebrating Dear Old Dad on Father's Day!

As Rosemary House celebrates their 50th Anniversary this year, we would be remiss in not honoring dear old dad, Byron L. Reppert. Our father was such an important part of The Rosemary House. From the very beginning, he was responsible for the 'book work'. He would sit at his desk and complete all the necessary forms and information to keep the government happy. He's also the handyman that laid the original brickwork in the gardens behind the shop, creating a little cottage garden where mom would hold her garden talks. He was mom's mode of transportation as she never learned to drive. Whatever lecture she gave, he was there, tending shop in the back of the lecture hall. He loved to meet and greet people, and could always find a connection to continue the conversation.

1995

Always in attendance at special events held at the shop, he was also an important part of the tea room. This pair formed the foundation that is The Rosemary House and Sweet Remembrances.

And he wore many other hats, too! errr, costumes!

While residing in NJ, and working as a sales representative for Atlantic Richfield, here he was captured in this photo helping one of his filling station clients with an Easter promotion in 1958.










And, after moving to Mechanicsburg, his community responsibilities included serving on the Borough Council, and he was elected Mayor in the mid '70s. He also enjoyed playing Santa, arriving on a firetruck to the enthusiastic smiles of the towns littlest people. This photo was taken with his son-in-law Phil and his adorable grandchildren, Jessica and Jacob.

If you have a fond memory of Byron, please share it on our Rosemary House Guest Book page!

Happy Father's Day, Dad!