Garden Planting

Buying plants during my lunch hour was a mistake. All I could think about on Tuesday afternoon was getting home to put the new plants into my re-built garden. The fact that I had them on a corner of my desk because it was too hot to leave them out in the van didn’t help. The basil smelled wonderful!

Newly planted:

• basil - 6 plants. There were three in each pot, so I wound up with nine plants when I thought was getting three. Oops! Perhaps I’ll put the remaining three plants in a pot and put them on my filing cabinet at work.
• curled-leaf parsley - 6 plants. I like the curled-leaf parsley better than the flat-leaf variety. The flat-leaf parsley tastes more bitter, especially if it doesn’t get enough water. Six plants sounds like a lot, but parsley is a favorite food of black swallowtail caterpillars. The butterflies are so pretty, I don’t mind sacrificing a few parsley plants, so I always buy extra in the hope that the caterpillars will leave enough for me!
• sage - 1 plant. I’ve only tried sage once before, and it didn’t grow very well. Perhaps this time it’ll grow better.
• marigolds - 2 plants. My mother-in-law likes to get these for the children every spring. The three of them have fun transplanting the flowers into pots, then we bring the pots home, set them outside, and usually forget about them by July. This year’s marigolds’ chances of survival just increased ten-fold…

The corner spot is reserved for a new rosemary plant. The girls and I will start looking for one over the weekend. For now, I’ll probably fill the other holes with colorful annuals until I decide what, if anything I’d rather do with them.

Later in the evening, I also planted seeds - chives, thyme, and tarragon. We’ll see what happens. If my gardens had to rely on my ability to grow plants from seed, I probably would have completely lost heart years ago. Still, if the chives grow, I’ll likely plant them near where the marigolds are now. The thyme and tarragon will probably go into their own separate pots. I’m planning to put a small plant stand in another corner of the deck, which is where I’ll put my potted herbs. Then, I can just sit back and watch things grow!

(shhh...yes, if all goes well, and the seeds actually sprout and grow, I'll have parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme in my herb garden, but let's not tell anyone, OK? I get that song stuck in my head often enough as it is…)