kitchenMage's Herb Garden

Half-price Aerogarden, today only!

Fresh herbs are an essential ingredient of my cooking, which makes me lucky to have an herb garden of my own. Even here in theOtherCity, where my tenure is anything but permanent, I someoneElse replanted the front swath of an overgrown strawberry bed with herbs. More telling, as the moving van was being loaded,  I someoneElse dug up my favorite dwarf sweet bay tree, which I could not bear to abandon and brought it along in a pot. Then someoneElse I bought another one. (hi, my name is kitchenMage and I am an herbaholic...)

Sadly, not everyone is fortunate enough to have the space or sunlight for any sort of outdoor herb gardening, and the indoor herb growing methods have been limited and expensive. This has left apartment dwellers at the mercy of the market. The one with the five buck clamshells of suboptimal herbs.

Fluttering by the garden

Spotted flitting between the anise hyssop and this aptly named butterfly bush in the herb garden the other day, this beauty is a Red Admirable (or Red Admiral if you must be modern). They are common as the nettles upon which they nectar but I still love those marbled-looking underwings and bright blue spots. According to Robert Pyle's book, The Butterflies of Cascadia, they also like rotting apples, which means it is probably good that the apple tree has a guardian.

One more bit of pretty after the jump...