The time for planting has finally arrived, and choosing herbs for the kitchen garden is one of spring’s most delightful tasks. Rubbing leaves between my fingers, I sample the scents of oregano, rosemary, basil, and other favorites. This year, I found curry and winter savory. I arrange and rearrange the pots on the surface of the soil, deciding what looks good where and leaving room to sprinkle flowers in between.
A Wood Thrush sings. We are in the middle of the annual two-week-long stretch in which “strings” from oak trees rain down like there’s no tomorrow, so I woke to said strings clinging to all the plants I’d purchased. More will quickly replace the strings I pick off before planting, but they’ll stop falling soon. Then the hickory strings will start. Living among big, old trees is messy; but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us.”
-Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
