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I am a brand new mother of ...
thyme and chives ...
dill ...
basil ...
and cilantro.
The parsley hasn't come up yet (I didn't soak the seeds before I planted them so I don't have high hopes), nor has the rosemary or mint. But I'm obsessed with watching them grow, and can't believe how fast they're growing up.
Several weeks ago, Andrew and I had a big discussion about how I really need a hobby. My problem is that I have enormous amounts of pent-up creative energy — it seems to increase the older I get — and that I keep committing to lots of freelance work to use it up.
So I'm trying to teach myself the basics of two skills I've for a very long time wanted to cultivated: quilting and gardening. I'm about halfway through one of those Idiot's guides to quilting, but with the gardening, it's definitely a jump-in-and-do-it kind of thing ... especially since it's the end of May already.
I've decided to grow an herb garden from seed. I have attempted several herb gardens in my life, always buying them as plants, and I never quite know how to care for them when I get them home, and they die. This time, I'm starting from the basics. I've spent several hours on You Grow Girl the past few days reading forums, analyzing the pros and cons of Miracle Gro (which I ultimately decided to steer clear of), convincing myself of the ease of container gardening. Actually, as precarious as I always thought gardening would be, almost everything I read is written to convince me that herbs grow easily — stick them in the sun, keep the soil moist, and let them go at it.
After all — it's nature, right? How could I, as clumsy and non-nurturing as I am, stunt the growth of plants that have been reproducing themselves for millions of years? Right?
We'll see. Today, I planted my seeds in pots and found a strategically sunny place to put them in my landlady's luscious backyard. Here they are:
The long box has thyme, chives, rosemary, and dill; the two terra cotta pots on the left contain lots of basil and parsley; the pots on the right contain mint and cilantro.
Something tells me I'm going to be very impatient over the next few weeks waiting for these little guys to show their faces.
The only thing I'm worried about now is that I might have put too many seeds in. I tried to space them out, but ended up "sprinkling" them a little more than I probably should have. I got a little carried away.
It was exhilarating, covering those little tiny seeds with soil and ordaining them to grow, grow, grow.
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