The Basil that Refused to Die

Last year I bought a cute little basil plant at my local farmers market. A winkled old gypsy lady sold it to me. I heard that she had pulled up in a brightly painted wagon as a cloud covered the sun, and though she made much money selling both homey and mysterious herbs, she left and was never seen again.

Or maybe I've been reading too much cliched fantasy lately.

Okay, I bought it at a perfectly ordinary tent from a perfectly ordinary woman, but the dang basil plant is quite magical all on its own. Last summer, I did nothing right for the poor plant. I picked leaves from its base, not from its tips. I watered it haphazardly and not at all often. Then, insults of insults, I dug it up after the first frost, put it in a pot, and brought it inside. In my ignorance, I put it in an east-facing window. It lasted until November then kicked the bucket. However, by that time I had cloned it—by accident.

When I brought the plant inside, I had trimmed off a few stalks. I didn't feel like hanging them up to dry right then, so I put them in a vase, set it on the dining room table, and forgot about them. A week later, I noticed that the leaves hadn't drooped or withered. A week after that, I saw that it had grown roots. A month or two after that (around the time the parent plant died), I decided that I had better pot the poor thing. After two months with no soil, nutrition, or strong daylight, you would think that I'd have a sickly, slow-growing or even dying plant.

Third generation cloned basil sprouting roots.

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Nope, I put it in the south window in the kitchen, and it thrived. Oh did it thrive. It blossomed, it grew through the blinds, and, finally, it took over the window. I kept trimming the stalks, and they just came back, twice as strong. I'd forget to water it for two weeks (this happened repeatedly), then I would frantically poor water on it, certain it would never recover. In a few hours it was back to being it's perky, happy self.

So this summer, I take it outside and bury back out in the garden. I don't waste time on letting it adjust slowly to the violent rainstorms and lack of climate control; I just plant it. After all, it doesn't care, why should I?

A week later, and its even greener and healthier than before. Magic, I tell you Magic.

Confessions of a Gardening Addict

I do not have a green thumb. Through a combination of ignorance, bad timing, and both over- and under-watering, I have never had anything I would call a real harvest from my garden, other than the Basil Plant that Will Not Die, Why Won't the Sunflowers Go Away? and Where Did All This Catnip Come From?

One year I decided to grow zucchini the summer that everyone's zucchini failed (mine was no exception), and the next year featured sweet peppers that never got larger than my very small fists (though my peppers were slightly larger than my friends'). I have catnip and sunflowers growing as gorgeous weeds, but I killed my supposedly hardy mint plant. My father could grow tomatoes on a west facing balcony in the most polluted part of Tokyo, yet I can't get a tomato to bear a single fruit in a sunny backyard. Don't even ask about my dismal strawberry harvest. Or the potatoes, or the green beans...well, you get the picture.

Plants seem to thrive despite my care—not because of it. I can't grow clover, but my “rescued” rosebushes are thriving on neglect. The year I deliberately planted sunflowers, none got taller than two feet. The next year I had a rogue sunflower in my catnip bed that towered over me by a good foot or so. This year I have “volunteer” sunflowers growing everywhere, even in the cracks of the concrete patio.

With this less than stellar background, you might not be surprised by my poor, pitiful pea harvest.

Between an unseasonably warm spring and only planting ten or so seeds from a “expired” seed packet, the fact that I got any peas was a blessing.

What surprised me was how delicious they were! Juicy, sweet as sugar, melt in your mouth when raw. I gobbled those suckers right up. And in a few months, I'll be digging up the green beans and hoping I can sneak in another harvest in the fall. South Dakota winters can start...mmm...anytime between mid-September to late November, so we'll see.