When you have a new puppy things get rearranged.
It is a bit like having a toddler, so all the herbs at the back door have been moved up a level and popped into big pots or broken pots are stood on end to create shields like little fences…
… a visual deterrent that moves the little pup along to the grass. Borage (which is kind of prickly, but a favourite of the bees, will grow up all around the base of the pots and in a month this will be full and lovely and edible. (And clean, out of reach of the pup and his naughtiness). They don’t tell you that when you get a puppy do they?! The peeing on the parsley thing! The rolling and playing in the thyme!
Now go on. Have a cup of coffee or tea. Relax.
With any luck it will be ridiculously busy tomorrow.
Good morning. It rained in the night. A lovely light rain. I know the farmers need it to dry out so they can get their enormous machines out onto the land but I love the rain, I love that our land is getting a thorough soaking and all those little underwater channels and streams and layers are getting full to over-flowing again. When there is a drought all we humans see is the top layer of damage, under this veneer that we wrestle for control over is an enormous system of water movement and soil and rock and gas development, a good flood is actually quite a natural ancient occurrence and part of this process. Like overflowing a bucket to clean out the grunge. We are just perchers on top of an extraordinary subterranean ecosystem.
I often notice on the side of the highways, these deep heavy unnatural structures that stretch like walls across the land, that after the rain there are huge ponds of stagnant water in the fields on either side of the roads, especially overpasses. Could it be that the upper streams of water, those flowing capillaries of movement have been stopped by these walls of rock and concrete and tar, the weight of cars pushing it further down with time. Maybe potholes are the earths revenge. Maybe the earth is saying I need a hole here, I need the drainage. I wonder if roads actually inhibit and rupture the natural flow of water. I must do some reading and find out more. If this is the case then I should petition the county to leave my little road as a dirt road and line it with trees. I know my basement is certainly in the way of an underground river!!
Of course this is why it is important to keep planting trees. Trees are another critical component in the jigsaw of movement and drainage and the natural underground recycling and cleansing of water. Actually my mind just jumped to a picture of us all leaping out into traffic all over the world and planting trees in the potholes! (funny!)
I will be working on the Forest of the Fellowship this coming week. Now that my back is feeling a little better.
You all have a wonderful, lovely relaxed day. It looks like we are going to have a wet one. Rain makes me love my bed.
Your sleepy friend, celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
65 responses to “Taking herbs to a new level”
Gentle rain here, too. Be gentle with your back. 🙂
I am trying sabra but i love to garden!
Rain makes me love my bed, too!
Hello Miss C, I have a bee related question. Do you know how far bees travel to forage for food?
I was about to weed some beds that have become overgrown with wild rocket and borage through the summer and they are swarming with bees ………..I’ll wait until the plants die down if you think the bees have come a long way to forage.
I believe they can travel up to three miles but do tend to stay within a mile or two from home,I think (though this tends to vary depending on food supply) those bees must be loving that overgrown corner of yours.. are they wild bees do you think? c
My Immediate neighbours don’t keep bees, so I assume they are wild bees. After your loss this winter I’m extra mindful of the bee visitors
I think you are lucky to be given some bees to feed at this juncture, I wonder where their hive is, do you think they are terribly short of feed?.. c
There are lots of plants in flower at the moment; as well as all the native species in full bloom. My thoughts are its party time? I have just had a quick walk in the garden and yes the rocket flowers are nodding with bees.
Another herb crazy gardener here: oddly enough have not grown borage, lemon thyme being my great favourite. And heaps of different basils and garlic chives above all and Vietnamese mint for my Thai cooking 🙂 ! [Love TonTon’s lecture to the ‘little one; on top of the steps!!]
OO vietnamese mint! I must try that, I love lemon thyme too and cannot do with out basil.. c
I wasn’t home to comment yesterday about your blueberries but you might investigate Saskatoons. They’re blueberries but not really. They’re supposed to grow well in non acidic soil, I planted a couple last year but they’re still very small. I have tried to grow blueberries before with no luck at all, hopefully these Saskatoons will work. The only place I could find them was in the Gurney’s seed catalog.
Hmm, I will definitely keep this in mind, if I find a few i might pop them in anyway! thank you sherry.. c
Concrete over gardens for parking and patios is such a problem here, that Auckland city requires a certain proportion to be of gravel or stones – and how they grumble.
In Howick, concrete build-up with houses had become such a problem, that run-off was eroding our garden where a tiny stream had once been, and was now a mighty torrent pouring into the sea every time it rained – and that was water that once would have soaked into the ground.
I’m sure herbs must be good for growing pups! Maybe he’s self-medicating !!!
I don’t know why I did not think of this before, poor you with a torrent, rushing water gouges out the land too.. c
Luckily, we moved! And now live on a cliff over-looking the sea, an hour north of Auckland…I just look sadly at hillsides in some places , where all the trees have gone, and over-grazing with sheep has now caused erosion… man’s use of the land seems to cause trouble every which way, unless it’s the way you are farming in what sounds like God’s Little Acre!….
Dont talk about potholes – our road is gravel but the local sealed roads are forever developing pot holes, As soon as the local council patches the holes it rains again and the holes appear ad nauseum. Some locals have painted around them, they look like a fish with the pothole in the middle, which helps us to avoid driving into them and some of them are quite decorative 🙂 Joy
those painted pot holes sound fantastic! morning joy! c
This post gave me a broad smile. I had to rearrange much of my house when Max arrived. Just last week, for the first time, I put a roll of fresh toilet paper on the holder and it has remained there. He’s growing up and it only took 5 years! Let’s hope Blue takes a faster route. 🙂
Oh dear.. the toilet paper as well… what a wild fellow he must be.. c
Glad you are feeling better!
Right now I’ll take the rain, too. (when I was little there was an old old farmer next door who used to keep a close eye on the amount of rain: he would bring his mules to the barn saying he didn’t want them to get stuck in the mud…he wasn’t kidding. Mud could get that deep and sticky. We were glad he had those mules – used them a couple of times to pull the car from the house to the road which was red dirt, not mud….but once we did have to park along the hard surfaced highway and walk down the dirt road to the soggy knee deep muddy “driveway”to the house…dad had gravel hauled in for the driveway after that. Rural living is always an adventure – shame so many don’t get to experience it and learn what it teaches?
wow.. mules, that would be cool! muddy drive way not so cool but oh well.. c
“Rain makes me love my bed.”
Funny how that works. Me too!
I agree, rainy days are good for sleeping.