Seven years ago I planted an herb garden along the front walk.
The boy on the left is going to be a sophomore in high school; the boy on the right is going to college. And Stella, who was 4 then, is heading to junior high. Time doesn't just fly; it tessers.
On the left-hand side of the walk we've always grown parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. The right-hand side is more variable, but there are always a bunch of basil plants.
About every other year I extend the bed by a little bit. This year I also moved the bricks outward to widen the beds. This is the view from my front porch today:
When I was a kid the cookbooks said that cilantro could also be called "Chinese parsley," so we always start out the season with some cilantro at the south end of the parsley-sage-rosemary-thyme bed. The idea is that the shadow of the house will shield the cilantro and keep it from bolting, but it bolts in about 35 seconds anyway. This year we put the chervil at the south end of the right-hand bed, where it also bolted.
Several of the plants have taken up permanent residence at this point. The big sage plant on the left, the one that's taking over the sidewalk, comes back every year. We always have at least one surviving thyme plant as well. The tarragon on the right has been there for a few years, as has the marjoregano. (We don't know whether it's marjoram or oregano, but they serve approximately the same purpose so we're not too worried about it.) We also have an established lavender plant that is hiding underneath the more boisterous lemongrass and lovage right now. But in November, the lemongrass and lovage will both die and the lavender will not.
Champ loved the lemongrass when he was here. Every morning on his first trip outside he would nibble on it delightedly. "Oh, Jamie," he would say with his wildly wagging tail, "the sun is up and the sky is blue and I do not have to pee any more and we are TOGETHER AGAIN and OH the lemongrass is delicious so delicious." He left all of the other herbs alone, but he ate lemongrass every single day. Weird, right? We miss Champ.
We are also missing the swallowtail caterpillars. We always plant extra parsley so that we have enough to make chimichurri for ourselves and also feed the swallowtail caterpillars. It's a rite of late summer, watching the tiny caterpillars get bigger and fatter day by day. This year we had a few tiny guys early in the season, but they all vanished overnight. Probably a hungry bird, right? Kind of a bummer.
Pete is not convinced that the herb garden is the most beautiful element of our landscaping. He would like it better if we had more blooming things beside the front walk, and more symmetry. But I love to walk through the varied and fragrant herbs. It makes me happy every single time. If we live here long enough I might turn the whole front yard into an herb garden, one spadeful of rich Midwestern soil at a time.
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