What's In My Teapot?

I am not sure if this post is random because it was the day for that type of review and my herb garden was uppermost in my mind, or if the post is random because that is the style of gardening that best describes me, but I suppose either way if the shoe fits I might as well wear it!!! The fact is, I have come to realize that I am not a professional gardener! Rather, my planting and plucking tends to be whimsical at best, disorganized at worst!!! Instead of consulting my herb books (and I do own several reputable ones!) and making organized & alphabetical lists, I go to the greenhouse, feel inspired by all the lovely options, and begin choosing plants and putting them in the cart according to what catches my eye, which means that when it comes to herbs, especially, that is just about everything !!! And then I get home and realize I already had a garden sage. Sometimes my random approach begats plants that thrive and even come up the next year (which is always a pleasant ...

These days there's a little more sunshine in my herb garden. That's the good part. The bad part is that we had to have an oak tree removed for that to happen! Our neighborhood is a bit unique for the beautiful trees planted along the streets, and most of them are oak trees, tall & beautiful. The only problem is that, as one neighbor informed me, the developers planted the wrong kind of oaks. Apparently the ones they chose have a life span of only 100 years. Now that sounds like a long time to me, and I guess the developers thought so, too, but the trees are reaching their prime and some of them are dying or have a habit of dropping large limbs at inopportune moments. One such tree resided in our front lawn, in a corner of my herb garden, right beside the driveway. On various occasions a large limb came thumping to earth. One time a large branch just narrowly missed Wesley's car and he became afraid to park underneath it. Another time, this past winter, a lar...