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.

NURTURING TINY TREASURES

I've always preferred the tiny flowers to large showy blooms. I have memories of my childhood lying in the grass and looking for scarlet pimpernels. I didn't know then that one day I would have them in my own garden and consider them a weed. But why I wonder, they are pretty little flowers when seen up close.

Scarlet pimpernel, Anagallis arvensis.

When I received a prize at the age of 11, in my first year in high school, it was natural for me to spend the money( it had to be at the local book store) on a wild flower book and I chose The Observers Book of Wild Flowers. I still have the book.

I am still a lover of tiny flowers. These sedums, with their starry flowers found a perfect niche in this broken rock. I purposefully left the gap when the rock broke as it was being brought into the garden.

Sedum potosinum, forms a neat mat of evergreen leaves which burst into bloom in the spring. It is easily propagated by breaking off a small piece and tucking into the soil.

Left unchecked it will spread to cover the ground but can be easily controlled.

Thymes also work well between pavers their roots protected by the stones.

 These plants flower at ground level but tiny flowers may go unnoticed unless brought to eye level and one way to do this is plant on top of a retaining wall.

Several years ago I found this little native blue gilia, Gilia rigidula, growing under some cedar trees. I transplanted it to this area where it has spread modestly over the years. It bloomed prolifically a few weeks ago and will bloom again on and off through the rest of the season.

I have not seen this plant at nurseries or even at the Wildflower Center, maybe due to its fragility. 

A few bluebonnets bloomed here this year due to the more open nature of the area after the loss of some Spanish oak trees.
And what a lovely surprise to see a bloom stalk on my grandfather's pipe, Callisia fragrans.

The flowers are so complicated I'm not sure if it is compound and whether they are petals, sepals or tepals.

And who can forget the little flowers on the Mammilaria cactus. When I spotted these bright little flowers on my thumb cactus they were barely visible hanging from the fireplace hearth.

 I moved it up onto a ledge where its little flowers could be admired.

Do you have tiny treasures in your garden? If not it may just be that they are there but you haven't noticed them.

IT'S THAT THYME

Ah! the first days of Autumn and the promise of cooler days to come. Well, not quite yet for central Texas, at least not in the afternoons. But the mornings are cooler and we are starting to think of the fall garden which is really our best gardening season. I would say that rarely a day goes by that I don't go out into the garden to pick herbs to use in cooking. Now is the time to do a little work in the herb beds.

Herb garden

This is my main herb growing area. I have sage, oregano, thymes of all varieties, garlic and regular chives, basil, lemon balm and our Texas tarragon substitute, Mexican mint marigold, Tagetes lucida. Also a few herbs I don't eat but which are technically herbs, santolina and society garlic. Parsley is missing this year because the plants, being biennial, flowered and died and the new seedlings I put in the ground didn't make it. I just bought a replacement parsley plant.

Silver and lemon thyme

One of the things about herbs is that they, like all the other plants at this time of the year, start to send their nutrients back down into the roots. The oils in the tissue become more concentrated which means they freeze at much lower temperatures. We are fortunate to have most of our herbs throughout the winter. If we cut back now then new leaves will form and they will be full of flavor and will also make better cuttings. I have never been much of a pruner but I do prune my herbs constantly. Oregano gets a constant pruning and keeps flushing out new leaves.

Thai basil 

When basil seeds between the pavers I let it stay. This one I cut back a few weeks ago so that it would bush out. It will die during a freeze but the seeds that fall in the cracks will germinate when the weather warms up in the summer.

Mexican mint marigold.

Mexican mint marigold, Tagetes lucida, dies back in the winter but is sure to return to the garden either
as the old plant or as a re-seeder. This one has also seeded in the pathway and will be trimmed to form a rounded bush. It will stay for a few years until it becomes so large as to overstay its welcome.

Culinary or common sage Salvia officinalis

The sage gets a frequent chopping because recently I have discovered how wonderful the leaves are when fried until they are crisp. Wonderful over cheese ravioli. I prefer to use this common sage but at a pinch will use the Salvia Berggarten, below.

Berggarten sage

This sage makes an attractive plant in the rock garden but it does have a tendency to travel so in the spring I remove the newly formed plant and plant somewhere else.

variegated chile pequin

Last year this variegated form of chile pequin showed up. I am happy to see it appear once again. The mockingbirds are welcome to the chiles. In fact they have been having a feast moving from chile pequin to lantana, to beauty berry. I often wonder if it is the same one that comes back year after year because at night he sets up camp in the Lady Bank's rose in the front garden. He has a tough job policing all the gardens but he does manage to chase the other birds away. He may have met his match the other day. The roadrunner came into the garden. I know he's looking for my lizards!

A GARDEN DECORATION FROM MY CHILDHOOD

One of the reasons we returned by sea from our recent trip to England, was the fact that there is really no luggage limit on a cruise ship. You just have to fit it all into the cabin and we did. All 12 suitcases. We saw it as a perfect opportunity to bring back some family memorabilia. We had recently made the decision to rent my mother's flat and needed to remove family items of importance. You would probably laugh at some of the things we brought back. Of course there were the usual tea bags, tins of Marmade, the boomerang my great uncle brought from Australia. Photographs, books, teapots, dinner sets and this glass ball.

The glass ball was one of several I had found, as a little girl, washed up on our beach at Cleveleys, in the north west of England. My gran-dad and I would go down to the beach, he looking for driftwood and me for any treasure the sea had washed up. It was a special day when I found a glass ball. Our garden had quite a row of glass balls but this was the only one that came with us when we moved house.

These balls were sewn into the fishing nets, acting as floats, until they were replaced by plastic and polystyrene. All the balls we found were green and I have no idea from where they came. There is no mark on the bottom. I read that most of the balls, made by the Japanese, were green because they made them from old saki bottles. I have no idea if mine came from a Japanese boat fishing out in the Atlantic and carried to our beach on the Gulf Stream. Maybe it just came from one of the trawlers which came into the busy fishing town of Fleetwood close by.

So the glass ball came back with us across the Atlantic and is now nestled in its new home, among the thyme, in my herb garden.