We went to a garden center in southside today. We used to go to the garden center a lot, back before engineering school took over my life. I had a cute little garden with herb beds filled with the herbs I used for cooking (I used to cook too). Even after school sucked up every bit of free time, the garden didn't look that bad, because I had a selection of well established, drought tolerant plants. Then, in the spring of 2004, it rained every day for months and pretty much capped everything but the groundcover and the rosebush. Oh, and the lemon balm, which could probably withstand a nuclear blast.
The garden center moved in the intervening years, a little bit further out of town, into an old strip mall with a revamped parking lot. Instead of long straight rows of cars, it has short curving rows of SUVs, which makes getting out of your great parking place an exercise in nail-biting terror. When I was backing out, poo-poo-heads in SUVs were whipping around behind me to zip into spaces which had become vacant a half second before. No sense in waiting. After all, someone might get that space before you. Except that the minivan at the other end of the row is waiting for a space and blocking traffic, so no one else can get by to steal "your" space.
We used the word "poo-poo-head" a lot today.
I think our days of going out to the garden center and browsing around are over. We can't hack the suburbs.
For all that, we got three kinds of lavender, two kinds of rosemary, sage, English thyme, sweet basil, Italian parsley, pennyroyal, and an interesting spearmint varietal Oz found, which is ideal for "beverages." I set up the beds in the old arrangement that worked so well. Oz put the mint near the lemon balm of doom so they can do battle. (I'm hoping they don't hybridize and make some invincible herb which tastes like kitchen cleanser.)
He then ran over the lemon balm with the reel mower.
As the shredded lemon balm leaves flew into the air, I said, "You know, everywhere a speck of lemon balm lands, we get a whole new plant."
"That's okay. We'll just keep knocking it down."
I think that's the evolutionary strategy of lemon balm.
392 words | April 30, 2006 09:37 PM | Real true story