PARSLEY, SAGE, ROSEMARY, AND THYME

Very shortly after we moved into the house, and with a clean slate, I began work on designing the herb and vegetable garden. The good growing season was coming up and I wanted to be able to plant a fall/winter crop. There is rarely a day goes by when I do not go into the garden to pick some herbs to enhance my dinners.

And like many herb gardens there is a sprinkling of flowers, some of them edible, and a few grasses to soften the paving made by David. (Today it is easier to find larger pavers but 20years ago it was impossible.)

Whether fresh or dried, herbs are plants that I could never do without and they are so easy to grow. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme plus chives, oregano, marjoram, mint, cilantro, and lemon grass all have found a home in my garden. And for those who do not have a garden many of these can be grown together in a single pot placed outside the kitchen door or on a sunny kitchen window ledge in the house.

This is a herb garden I made for my son for Christmas. Unfortunately it never reached him as we had to cancel our plans to go visit. Notice the addition of edible flowers. Among the herbs I planted are chive (onion and garlic) parsley, cilantro, marjoram and mint. If grown organically, flowers of violas can be added to your salads. 

Below I have picked thyme and rosemary which are the only herbs needed to flavor  my slow cooker pot of white beans. 

I also use rosemary chopped with garlic, salt and olive oils as a marinade for rack of lamb.

A sprinkle of dried thyme leaves, olive oil and salt is all you need to enhance the taste of roast tomatoes.

I grow two different kinds of sage. The first, Salvia officinalis, is the culinary sage. It grows year round in my garden. In early spring it flowers with the most amazing blue flowers worthy of any garden setting. It is easily propagated in the fall by bending a stem and pinning it to the ground ( the technique of layering)..

The second one is more ornamental, although it can be used in the kitchen. It has more rounded leaves Salvia officinalis 'Berggarten'

I use sage in stuffings and fried in butter or oil as a delicious finishing touch on the top of Italian dishes such as risotto..

Mint has been given a dedicated place alongside the potting shed and beneath the window box where I can

control it. It does need continual cut back to prevent it taking over the path but has found a happy home in this spot. This year I started using in in lamb burgers along with cumin and feta cheese. So delicious. Also, in mint sauce which we have with lamb, although I still prefer redcurrant jelly. It is great in a water melon salad with feta cheese and arugula. 

 I also use mint chopped with feta cheese and cumin in lamb burgers. 

It is impossible in our climate to successfully grow French tarragon but a good substitute in Mexican mint marigold, seen below with yellow flowers. I grow it mainly as a late-flowering ornamental.  

I grow 2 varieties of chive, onion chives and garlic chive. I prefer the former but it is more difficult to grow because the snails seem to really like it and frequently sever the plant at the base. It grows best throughout the winter blooming with beautiful balls of lilac flowers, which can also be used in salads. It is distinguished from garlic chives by its hollow round stems. Garlic chives have flat stems and have the typical allium white flower heads. 

Onion chive.

I also grow society garlic but only for its flowers and performance in our Texas climate. I have been told that the leaves can be used as a flavoring and the reason it was called society garlic was because it did not cause the same breathy problem that garlic does. I'm not sure this is really true!

                                                                                dill

The feathery fronds of dill are wonderful with fish and eggs. 

Cilantro I always allow to flower and go to seed so every year, in the fall,  cilantro pops up all over the garden. It is growing in among beets and carrots this year as well as in the herb garden path.

I grow Italian parsley, another herb I permit to go to seed, and find it popping up in many places. 

And finally oregano. I try to pick the stems early in the morning to hang in bunches to dry. I then crumble the leaves into a jar to use in many Italian dishes. Mixed chopped herbs are delicious in polenta. Oregano grows throughout the year and must be cut back frequently if you want to prevent it going to seed and keep it nicely shaped. It makes a useful small evergreen shrub for the garden. 

Basil is a summer herb which grows well for us in Texas. It dies over the winter and must be replaced every spring when temperatures are well about 50°

If you don't have a specific place for growing herbs then plants them in among garden plants. They will reward you by flavoring your food year round as well as saving you money at the grocery store. 

WINTER IN THE HERB GARDEN

Most days I go out into the herb garden to pick herbs for the kitchen. At this time of the year there is parsley, thyme, oregano, sage, the ever abundant garlic chives and rosemary, which are all good herbs for winter cooking.

Parsley has done a magnificent job of reseeding itself. It is even growing in the pathway cracks. You can never have too much parsley.

Oregano gets cut back several times a year to make sure it stays round and bushy with fresh leaves. Most of my kitchen uses are for dried oregano which I make from the fresh young leaves but I also use fresh oregano chopped with parsley and thyme in herbed polenta. A little goes a long way.

Dried oregano is wonderful when roasting butternut squash. Drizzle the cut side of the squash with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and a couple of pinches of the dried crushed oregano.
 

Sage also was trimmed back this winter so has plenty of fresh new growth. I love to use the fried leaves on top of risotto. This one is the common culinary sage, Salvia officinalis.

It has the added bonus of beautiful sprays of blue flowers in the spring.

S.officinalis flowers. Late March

This one is Salvia officinalis "Berggarten" which has the more rounded leaves. It can also be used in the kitchen although it has a stronger flavor. I use it mainly to add leaf interest to the garden.

I also have a very compact cultivar S. officinalis "minimus" which I have used at the front of the beds.

There is a small thyme bed at the base of the pillar planter. I try to grow a variety of thymes including lemon, variegated silver and German thyme.I shall have to replenish some of these thymes this spring. They get very woody with age.

Alyssum brings some welcome color into the winter garden as well as a sweet fragrance on warm sunny days.

Rosemary is just beginning to flower. For some unknown reason we lost most of our rosemary during the summer. I need to take cuttings this year to replace them.

This week was a tough week for me. Blood work, infusions, met with radiologist, a nuclear injection, followed by surgery on Thursday to remove the cancer and the sentinel nodes. Things are looking good and the preliminary biopsy on the lymph nodes showed the cancer had not spread. I await confirmation of this and the findings on the biopsy of the lumpectomy. Clear margins mean I will move on to the next phase-30 days of radiation! I started the weekend with a much lighter heart and really ready to get back out in the garden. It is perfect timing for the spring garden.

BACK TO THE BUSINESS OF GARDENING

I have been side-lined for the last couple of weeks by recovery from surgery. Something that was probably caused by all the time I have spent outdoors in the sun either gardening or hiking. I will be more cautious in future but let this be a warning. WEAR SUNSCREEN.
Even though it is February there is much to do cutting back and removing plants that didn't make it through several unexpected deep freezes.  Here is one plant that has been a star through all kinds of weather.

The large rosemary is planted out front by the side of the driveway. It has never been watered and has withstood drought, summer heat, hail and freezing temperatures. Yesterday it was blooming as it has never bloomed before and I even spotted a bee visiting one of the flowers.
On one of my non-gardening days I did the rounds of the nurseries. For a moment I thought that I might have missed spring as all were overflowing with spring bedding plants, grasses and vines. Of course I was tempted just as I was last year. Five pots of grape hyacinths at $1 a pot was easy. The patio table needs a little brightening. I still have the ones I saved from last year but they are making a slow start. Once in a while it is worth having someone else do the planting for you.

One plant I wasn't tempted to buy was a large pot of climbing jasmine, Jasminum polyanthum.

And this is why. I have had maybe 3 or 4 good years when the plant made a worthy bloom. Yes, the scent was heavenly but this is a vigorous vine forming a big tangle of finely cut leaves. This was cut to the ground last year! It roots easily and I don't doubt there will be a stray shoot somewhere that will try to make a comeback.

After cutting it back to the ground I used the pick axe to remove the root.

The question now is its replacement. Something which takes less work. I don't mind dieback in the winter if the plant performs well in the summer. Nor do I mind a bare trellis in the winter. I'm pondering on remaking the trellis so that it reaches to just above the weep screen. That way it is easier to get smaller vines started. This is a south facing exposure but sheltered from early morning and late evening sun by the wall of the house. Maybe I'll try a Mexican flame vine or even a clematis. I wish our nurseries carried better selections of clematis but I will be out looking for a summer bloomer this time.
The roses in the English garden are all pruned. It doesn't seem to make a difference how early we prune because they were already leafing out. I see a lot of weeding to be done. Last year I planted iris  around the bird bath. They seem a little slow to take.

The citrus are out of the potting shed. The Mexican lime still has fruit as do the lemons.

Some seedlings are outside to harden off. Some destined for the window box and planters others for the ground.

Brachyscome, Swan River daisy

10 week stocks

The grasses are all cut back and it will be a a waiting game to see if the ruby crystal grasses will return. If not there are plenty of Mexican feather grasses to take their place.
A cloudy, cool day is my favorite day for gardening so that is where I am heading right now. It's good to be out there again.

GARDEN BLOGGERS' BLOOM DAY November 2015

Some much needed rain has brought many flowers out of hibernation in time for May Dreams November Bloom Day.

Rosa Felicia

Roses a re booming again and a cluster of blooms on the musk rose Felicia has me stopping to inhale her wonderful fragrance.

Not nearly so fragrant is Molineux, but with more of a tea rose fragrance, a new addition this fall.

Rosa Monineux

Called pink crystal by some and ruby crystal by others I am beginning to understand why. Pink seed heads in the spring and with the cooler weather a much deeper ruby-colored seed heads.

Melinus nerviglumis

Other flowers have a greater depth of color with the cooler nights. Mealy blue sage, Salvia farinaceae.

Salvia leucantha blooms were quick to fade during the long warm dry days of October, but the rain bought a flush of new flowers.

The first flowers on the rosemary.

Still plenty of color from the narrow leaf zinnias, Zinnia linearis. Soo I will be collecting their sees for next year.

Society garlic, Tulbaghia violacea

And the generous seeding common orange cosmos, Cosmos sulphureus.

Clouds of pink and white gaura, Gaura lindheimeri

A cluster of blooms, with Dicliptera the main player.

We are winding down for the winter but signs of spring are already popping up all over the garden.

DOLDRUMS

I was looking for a word to describe how I have been feeling about gardening, for at least 6 months. The word doldrums sprang to mind. Like those sailors in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner I was stuck waiting for a breath of wind to push my becalmed ship out to a place where I could catch the trade winds and send me on my way.

My lack of enthusiasm for the garden had slow beginnings, long before our 7,500 mile summer road trip to the Maritimes of Canada. I normally take gardening books and magazines to keep me busy during those days on the road, snipping out ideas from the magazines and dreaming about the garden back home. But strangely, I found myself barely thinking about the garden and I hadn't even packed the usual years gardening magazines.
 On our return I got busy cutting back the overgrowth of 6 weeks away. But as the weeks went by I found myself having increasing difficulty bending, lifting and carrying. All those things that I had done so easily for all my gardening years. Physical problems had been bugging me for nearly 2 years. I'd had physical therapy, thinking the problem was muscular, I'd researched, added all kinds of exercises thinking that this time I had the answer. I saw an orthopedic specialist who told be "hip surgery" I didn't want to believe him. So much so that we continued with our planned trip to Galapagos and Machu Picchu in January. This is probably one of the most physically exacting trips we have ever taken and made me realize the time had come. Luckily I had made an appointment for a second opinion with an orthopedic surgeon for shortly after our return. X rays showed worn hip joints and huge bone spurs. Only one thing was going to put things to right and that was a total hip replacement. There and then I decided, and asked  'How quickly can you do this. I have two garden tours this April?' and so less than two weeks later he fitted me into his schedule and Friday I walked out of the hospital with a new right hip. And I really mean walked out.  I don't need a wheelchair.

On the return from the hospital, pulling into the driveway I was greeted by the rosemary bushes in full flower. I don't think we have had a year when they looked so magnificent. I sent David out with camera to take a photo and also one of the clump of narcissi blooming in the English garden. I can glimpse through the windows that spring is on the way.

Things will be running a little late this year as I have been told to stay away from all those nasty garden spores until my wounds have healed. I will have to send David out to buy tomato plants and he will have to pot them up into larger containers. Then there are the old broccoli plants to pull out before the harlequin bugs go to town, and check the alyssum for harlequins ( they love the brassicas and alyssum is one) There are the seedlings of brachyscome I started and now require potting up. Pretty soon I will be able to do all the things I always did out there, bending, lifting, raking. I feel a breath of wind blowing in my sails. I am starting to think about all the things I want to do out there.

When I think I could have had this surgery done over a year ago and saved myself a lot of pain. I am now like all the other people who say, "I wish I had done it sooner"