Oh Brave and Faithful Plant

 

In late spring the baby basil plants were mostly sold, leaving only leggy and fragile ones. On the way home, the healthiest plant fell over and the stem broke. One shoot remained in that pot and two, undersized, in the other. The survivors all went into one planter because I expected to lose one.

 

I'm a good transplanter. No one else will ever know that except you and I. It is love. I love my basil annuals. Told them so and blessed them. Brought them indoors on cool nights. Moved them twice daily into the strongest summer light when the trees leafed out and cast shadows. A creature (squirrel?) always upsets and paws through the pot, but only once per season, usually soon after planting, as if to dash my hopes and grieve me. The basil always survives this. Looked up Saint Basil. Looked up Basil as a baby name. Breathed deeply. Scissored the leaves for cooking. Picked the flowering heads off so they'd keep leafing.

Today when frost is only days away I filled the chopper with garlic, olive oil, pine nuts and lemon, for pesto-making, and boiled clean a jar that held the store-bought pesto I buy when I must settle for less. (I've tried freezing, drying, and microwaving my basil harvest. Nothing but pesto works.) I thanked my plant for its beauty and fortitude as I picked off every leaf and the room filled with its sacred fragrance. This year I told it, "You are one of the great joys of my life."

Animals Know What's Best

All animals know and go for the best part of anything: Here's a daddy long legs enthroned and lounging in the most elegant and fragrant of palaces, the crown of my basil plant, not caring if the plant is not native and scrawny because, I think, I transplanted the young plant into too big a pot, hoping for a big lush green bushy grant of basil. But I love it anyway and am glad a creature has found and appreciates it and feels safe there; there are not enough leaves on the plant for the spider to worry about the risk of becoming pesto.

A young cedar plant, being invasive, picks the choicest spot for its growth an inch in front of a healthy deciduous tree, such as an oak, with the goal of overshadowing it and appropriating all its nutrients, not caring that it's being rude and the other tree was there first; it's just nature.

I was taught to expect or take second-best and leave the absolute best for somebody else -- let them have the best bedroom, best part of the chicken, or shower first and get the hot water, etc. So glad I live where wild animals are teaching me the proper attitude, and there's no pressure to compromise.

Happy Labor Day!

I'm Self-Adhesive, Are You?

Feeling that I couldn't possibly make it worse I bought some self-adhesive fake tiling for the bathroom backsplash area. My spatial skills are poor so it took time to figure out how the four sheets of fake tile fit together, even though they were lettered "B," "C," "D" and "E" -- where was "A"? And the walls and fixtures are themselves crooked. I did the best job  I could. I've seen much worse in photos of pre-World-War-I Eastern Europe -- and I like the stick-on tile very much, maybe just because it's a change.

So enchanting was the stick-on that I decided I would do self-adhesive tiles on the kitchen floor. There is no way I could make it worse.

I watched every YouTube about laying down self-adhesive flooring, and measured, and bought 50 tiles (you buy extra in case you mess up a few) and the right kind of grout and a putty knife for the gouges and ragged edges that currently expose the concrete floor just beneath. With the floor prepared and cleaned it is perfectly okay to lay down new self-adhesive flooring on top of it. Yes, that bruised and cracked stuff is my old kitchen floor. It's not dirty; it's as clean as I can make it. Even my amateur DIY can't possibly make it look worse and there is a chance it might look better.

I chose this gray-green flooring (68 cents per tile) because it's called "Basil" and will show neither white dirt nor black. I haven't laid it down yet. Am still mapping and visualizing the work the floor will need. I can't move the fridge and stove until I find a magic lamp and a genie comes out who will move them for me, so the whole kitchen can't be self-adhesive floored until then.

You might wonder why no one is helping. Or maybe you aren't wondering. It's because I'm self-adhesive. And nobody else I know would think this is fun.

Most Loved Herb on Earth...

....Basil. I'll throw basil leaves in my bed and sleep with them. This was the week, it always is, to clip the branches off the stems, to cut from their branches the heavenly-scented basil leaves that you see here, and wash them and dry them and then to pulverize the dickens out of 'em, using 1 cup packed basil leaves with 1/4 cup olive oil and salt. It's not quite "pesto"; that'd have garlic and nuts in it. Garlic flavor doesn't freeze well. So what I make at harvest time is basil paste.A huge green mess in the kitchen (pesto mess-toe) ensues. For a minute I dreaded doing the basil-paste thing but it takes an hour and lasts all year, and can't think of too many other things that are so predictably satisfying. And then I told myself, "You're complaining about fresh basil? Golly, don't you have it rough!"

Three big happy plants gave me the harvest you see here. After making the paste I scoop ice-cube-sized portions onto a tray, put tray in freezer, and when the portions are frozen, wrap and package basil cubes for winter. Can't put the cubes in the bed, but I can open the bag and sniff 'em when I need a basil fix.