The most exciting part of having joined the landed bourgeoisie is just that, being "landed". Sure an acre and a half doesn't compare to the estate of Earl Granville back home in the Outer Hebrides, but for me, it is plenty to be going on with. When we started our hunt for a home I had wild fantasies of rearing pigs, sheep and chickens, growing all my own fruit and veg, and generally never going to the shop again. I am sure that anyone that has been to the average Walmart has felt the same longing never to enter the mouth of retail Hades with the octogenerian Cerberus saying "welcome to Hell...sorry Walmart" again.
Having had to rein in my dreams, we have made a modest start on our future garden in terms of turning our deck into a herbarium, and please do pronounce the "h", it would be rude to ignore it entirely. With the aid of a few planters, which us Brits call "window boxes", some terracotta pots and even some coffee cans, we now have the beginnings of herby happiness.
We have had the first planter for quite some time now, as you can see from the picture the basil is going nuts, so much so that Mrs V (as I lovingly call the missus) will be making pesto tomorrow. Also in the planter is my favourite herb, rosemary, which happens to be one of my favourite girls' names, and another herb that gets used alot in our house, dill.
Today though we added four more pots to the deck, a couple of traditional terracotta pots and a couple made from the large coffee cans in which we get our morning Joe. To make the coffee cans usable as pots I punctured a load of holes into the bottom for drainage. We bought the herbs themselves at our local farmers' market in Charlottesville, having decided to just wander around after breakfast. The herbs we bought, in order of the pictures below are sage, thyme, garlic chives and lemon verbena, which is completely new to me but which has a phenomenal lemon aroma that apparently is good in marinades, jams and jellies.
Eventually we will start work on building raised beds and trellises for the fruit and vegetables, but for the time being it is good to have a green, edible deck.
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