I walked down the sidewalk this morning to retrieve the newspaper and the tricolor sage grabbed my attention. It's still fairly small but it is so pretty. There's something about those delicate cream-colored edges on every leaf-- they just feed my soul. "Me too me too!" said the golden sage (what, your plants don't talk to you? maybe you need better plants, huh?) and I just stood there for a minute and breathed it in, soaking up that perfect color.
Yesterday Pete said, "I used to think the herb garden was very untidy, but it has grown on me."
And, okay, the herb garden is a little untidy. I do not care in the slightest.
When I first turned over sod in 2013, I planned for one side to be parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and the other to be mostly basil. OH, that linked picture makes me a little nostalgic. There used to be so much plastic weaponry in my house, you guys.
The parsley is intermingled with cilantro, which in my childhood was often called Chinese parsley. (Google suggests this is still a thing -- who knew?) It seems to be happy close to the house, where the shade keeps it from bolting quite as quickly as it would in a sunnier spot. It's fairly self-sustaining at this point-- it bolts and drops its seeds, and they germinate when conditions are favorable, and we eat some and let the rest bolt and drop more seeds. This year we also have volunteer purslane growing there, which I was prepared to root out until I realized that a person could also sing "Purslane, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme." So I'm letting it do its thing for now. Last year we did not see any swallowtail caterpillars on our parsley, and I am watching a little anxiously to see if they return this summer. It's so much fun to watch them getting fatter and stripier that I don't begrudge them the parsley.
On the other side we do have a lot of basil, but there's a bunch of other stuff going on too. The oregano has gone totally feral. It keeps snaking under the sidewalk and popping up in the parsley patch. "Are you parsley?" I ask it sternly. "I think not! Go home!" The lavender, the tarragon, and the lovage have all gone perennial. They want to be BEST FRIENDS and they want to be RIGHT NEXT to the sidewalk. I keep trying to coax them into slightly different positions and they are not having it. We were surprised when our savory, an impulse buy from last season, came back again this year.
We've never planted vegetables in the herb garden before, but this year we're giving it a whirl. I saw a little pot of dinosaur kale at the garden store and I knew that it needed to come home with me. "Kale?" said Stella with a snort of disgust. "Yes," I said, "don't you ever look at a baby kale plant and say to yourself, 'OH THOSE GORGEOUS RUMPLY BLUE-GREEN LEAVES I MUST HAVE THEM I WILL PUT THEM IN MY MOUTH'?" "...No," answered Stella, with a certain emphasis. But Pete has been observed petting the gorgeous rumply blue-green leaves, and he also planted a kohlrabi seedling that someone at school gave him. We have spotted cabbage white butterflies around both the kale and the kohlrabi, so we may be growing a bumper crop of caterpillars rather than a bumper crop of brassicas. But we're okay with that.
This year we have a teeny volunteer basil plant for the first time; usually our climate is just too unpleasant for basil to come back. We have also planted a new-to-us variety called African blue basil that is supposed to be perennial.
I think I would be perfectly content with the herb garden if I had a chervil plant, but I've had no luck so far finding chervil. Google tells me that Walmart is advertising chervil plants. Do I want chervil enough to go to Walmart for it? I will have to think about that.
When I went looking for the squirt gun picture in my archives, I came across this post from six years ago in which I was gardening but not enjoying it very much. I am not sure exactly why I am finding the enjoyment:drudgery ratio to be so much more favorable now, but here in June 2022 I am seeing the beauty and the bounty more than the weeds and the worries.
Maybe I should put some gravel down between the sidewalk blocks to cut down on the weeds? Maybe by August of this year I will sound equally grumpy because I will be good and tired of uprooting the recidivist creeping charlie? But right now, you guys, there are tiny flowers on the thyme, even though it had a tough winter and has been coming back slowly. The lavender blossoms are purpling and the lovage is a shade of green that makes my soul sing.
Maybe I will go pet the kale again.
Recent Comments