Side blooming

The herbs are blooming now. It's a treat (as I mentioned) to have the lavender flowering, and the thyme is flowering, too. The oregano will be blooming shortly.

Scented slashing

I have once again attacked the oregano.  It was sprawling out into the sidewalk and wandering from side to side like it thought it was king of the garden.  

I simply took a knife to it and cut it back until it wasn't a) flopped all over the sidewalk b) flopped all over any surviving plants around it c) flopped all over itself.  At first I felt a bit bad about hacking away at what is basically my best plant.  It grows so nicely!  But then the nice smell of herb filled the air and I realised that this is a plant that needs to be cut.  It needs some harvesting.  It needs to have a reason to refresh.  

I did notice, after I had cut off most of its blooms, that the bees seem to really like the flowers.  I don't like depriving bees.  I'm guessing there will be more flowers shortly, though.  The bees can make do for a little while. 

Culinary Herbs

The garden at home is not really meant to produce edible things.   Too many dogs relieving themselves on the leaves, too many passers-by using the soil as an ashtray, too many chips of paint from an uncertain era dropping from the house.  Nonetheless, there are a few herbs in there.  I grow herbs mostly because I like the big green patches that they can produce.  The walking thyme, for example, can get where it wants to go in no time at all.  The lavender is not fulfilling my dream of fragrant drifts throughout the beds, but it keeps growing and I like that about it.  The stuff I've been calling mint isn't mint after all.  Probably oregano.  I tore a chunk of it out this evening.

It was muscling in on the gladiolus territory.  I love the herbs and their obliging way of growing healthily in whatever there is, but I can't let the glads get suffocated.  I'm quite emotionally invested in the glads. 

Last weekend, I brought home from the plot some strawberries and some chives to plant at home.  Chives and parsley are culinary herbs I would love to have patches of at home.  

I never use a whole "bunch" (as defined by the grocery store) of chives, and I often don't use up all the parsley, even though I do try.  The obvious answer is to grow them myself and take small bits when necessary.  

I would be delighted to get an indoor herb garden going, but there is the question of which window is Chutney-the-cat-proof.  The chives I planted at the beginning of this year were growing alright but they got a mysterious mould-like substance in their pot and I didn't dare let it linger.    The undead basil is still growing on the window-ledge.  I even pinched it to encourage it to grow out instead of up.  It will need to go out soon enough.  

I should try again with the indoor garden, but in the meantime, I have some chives to keep me going in the summer months.  Let's hope that they survive.