Friday, November 28, 2008

Playing In The Garden

When I've not been in the garden for a while I forget just how much I love playing in the soil. I love the soreness that comes from digging and bending, the dirt under your fingernails - despite good quality gardening gloves - and, of course, I love the end result.
I had a beautiful herb garden when we last lived here and, as expected, only the very hardy survived two years of tenants. I still had a little rosemary bush, an enormous clump of lemongrass, an ever-spreading growth of chives and an extraordinarily tall fennel plant but the rest of the herb garden had been taken over by ground cover, weeds and fallen leaves.
Offspring #2 and I took ourselves off to the nursery today and came home with a variety of herbs and an urge to garden. We had to delay the gardening until later this afternoon but, after collecting #1 from school, the kids and I got stuck into some serious work. We raked and weeded, pruned and trimmed, dug and planted, watered and... got watered (#1 was in charge of the hose. What more can I say??).
We've planted dill, lavender, nasturtiums, thyme, Italian parsley, coriander, mint, flat-leaf parsley, sage and sweet basil. I can't wait till I can use them in my cooking

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If it wasn't for the water restrictions I'd have a herb garden. That, and I'm too lazy. Good for you.

(I buy my herbs, fruit & veg from local producers at the Farmers' Markets... I hope that's a reasonable alternative to grow-your-own).