yet another post about gardening

This is what French tarragon looks like:


Last weekend, I asked a foodie friend for recommendations on which herbs to add to my strawberry pot (I currently have basil, thyme, and oregano). He said that he had one in mind, but couldn't remember the name. He kept trying to give us clues: it's French. You use it in scrambled eggs. It has flat leaves. Until, finally, we ended the discussion with the following exchange:

Him: Remember, at the cottage, I made this cream sauce with the steak?
Me: Tarragon?
Him: Yes! Tarragon!
Me: It's a herb?
Another friend: It's French?
Him (slightly exasperated): YES!

So, there you go. Tarragon is both a herb and French, and there is some currently on my window sill. I think the take-away from this is that I am much more interested in the eating part of my herbs than I am in the provenance. (Although, ornamentation also has its place: I want to get some red basil not because I am particularly fond of basil — I'm not — but because it's just so gosh-darned pretty.)

Meanwhile, the tomatoes have sprouted teeny tinny sprouts. The toilet paper tubes I was using as planters grew mold (look: they said to keep the darn things humid), so I took them out of the sunroom and put them by the garbage to toss into the green bin. I left them there for a day or two, and then I checked and ... they had sprouted more than an inch. I didn't want to keep them in their moldy wrappings (I had assumed that they were dead), and I didn't have time to repot them, so I did this:


Disposable muffin wrappers.

Obviously it's not a long-term solution, but I've since put them into a small pot and they seem to be fine. I'm just a bit cavalier because I didn't actually expect all four to sprout; I really only need one tomato plant. Maybe two. So if one of these dies ... *does my best impression of a Gallic shrug*

I think this means I am getting slightly less uptight about this whole gardening process. There's nothing like killing a whole strawberry plant on your first pass to give you a sense of laissez-faire.

Oh! Except that I didn't kill the strawberries! It turns out they have mold, not damping off, and that can be recovered from (as soon as I have time to take out the mold and the first few inches of soil — see what I mean about cavalier?). So now I have more strawberries — having bought a replacement for the now-not-dying plant. It's hard for me to see a downside to this.

Meanwhile, the outdoor garden is in full swing:


The roses have started to bloom...


And we are a go for the tulips.