{"id":7209,"date":"2016-03-06T21:21:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T02:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7209"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:50:04","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:50:04","slug":"happy-birthday-herb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7209","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Herb!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last February, I ran\u00a0away from home.<\/p>\n

The winter was too much for me. I got into the car and drove to South Georgia and then Tampa and then Savannah.<\/p>\n

When I finally came back\u00a0on March 6, the cold was mostly gone. I bought my herb plants for the year, and that\u00a0Sunday, I cradled them into their new nests of soil and set them out on the deck.<\/p>\n

I thought then, and still do, that putting plants into pots is like putting animals in the zoo. It’s unnatural. It’s not an ecosystem. They might live but they won’t thrive.<\/p>\n

I keep those herbs on the deck\u00a0to eat, so I don’t let them flower; if they do, I nip the buds off. Though I talk to them every day, what kind of life do they have? Grow, snip, into the\u00a0cooking pot.<\/p>\n

I can’t help myself. It’s just so pleasurable to gather fresh herbs from the deck for dinner. Every morning I touch them and talk to them, and the smell on\u00a0my fingers from\u00a0their scented leaves is too intoxicating\u00a0to miss out on.<\/p>\n

This year was different from all the others. I dreaded winter, as I usually do, but the winter I got was something worse than I’d imagined<\/a>. I spent hours\u00a0on the couch, looking out at gray skies that were as cloudy as my brain, trying to understand the trauma that had stripped me like the bare trees.<\/p>\n

In November I’d normally have taken all the herbs, dumped their rooted remains, and turned over the pots until next year.<\/p>\n

I didn’t this year. \u00a0The herbs kept growing all through November<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They were still alive in December, when Tom was home on vacation, and we made a tomato sauce for eggplant parmigiana using our\u00a0herbs\u00a0from the deck.<\/p>\n

In January and February I had to cover the thyme, oregano and chives\u00a0a couple times when it was really cold, but they stayed alive.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The last snowstorm, on Thursday,<\/a> I didn’t bother covering them. There were already big shoots of chives, and the first stirrings of green among the spindly thyme and oregano, but I figured\u00a0since they’d made it this far\u00a0through the winter they could stand a few inches of snow.<\/p>\n

\"thyme\"
Thyme<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The spearmint, which I thought was dead, has put up a bunch of new small leaves. The peppermint still had a single stalk of leaves that lasted through everything, uncovered the whole winter, and now it’s got newbies pushing up for the sun:<\/p>\n

\"peppermint\"<\/p>\n

Today I celebrated their “birthday.” \u00a0Their stems are spindly, and they’re hungry for\u00a0fertilizer. They need trimming and love, caged\u00a0as they are here\u00a0on the deck.<\/p>\n

I’ll bring in fresh basil plants, and see if the bee balm resurrects itself. Another year, another zoo of herbs.<\/p>\n

I’ll apologize to them for keeping them captive.<\/p>\n

Already I can smell their minty oils when I run my fingers over their leaves.<\/p>\n

They lived through winter, and so did I.<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2015, the year that these herbs arrived on the deck. There it is, nestled next to that sprig of peppermint.<\/p>\n

\"2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last February, I ran\u00a0away from home. The winter was too much for me. I got into the car and drove to South Georgia and then Tampa and then Savannah. When I finally came back\u00a0on March 6, the cold was mostly gone. I bought my herb plants for the year, and that\u00a0Sunday, I cradled them into … read more Happy Birthday, Herb!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[67,378,68,201],"class_list":["post-7209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-67","tag-cooking","tag-herbs","tag-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7209"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7216,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7209\/revisions\/7216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}