Good To Know I'm Not (Yet) An Old Dog

I learned a new trick this summer.

I have been growing my own herbs for years: basil, rosemary, Italian parsley, oregano, fennel, lavender, sage.

  This is the right side of our porch.  Left to right: oregano, sweet basil, opal basil, rosemary (2). Behind the oregano is a scraggly bronze fennel. The oregano and fennel were transplanted this spring from the old overgrown herb garden.

 

This is the left side of our porch. There's sage in there somewhere and a rogue plant from the melon family. The rest is junk. I've got some stray sunflowers I may transplant.

I especially love basil and rosemary. I live in zone 6 so some of my herbs won't live through winter. I've had no luck bringing them inside. This past winter was very mild so I thought I'd try putting buckets over my two rosemary plants. They continued to grow, slightly, but were very robust by the time the danger of frost was past. I bought 3 more plants so I could share the harvest with my daughters.                                                                                                                                                                   

I was in a pasta making mood a couple of weeks ago so I went out to harvest some herbs. When I'm cooking I pick the herbs and put them in a glass of water to keep them fresh until I'm ready to use them. I didn't use all the rosemary so some was left in the glass. In just a couple of days it started rooting! I've had basil do that, but hadn't seen rosemary do that before. Well, now I'm pretty excited. I love this new trick. I can make more plants. Better yet, I can try to keep some rooting all winter and have plants to put outside next spring. Line up little jars of water in the window sill. That's the new plan, anyway.


Here's another new trick I learned: Rosemary Cornbread. I was in a hurry to get some cornbread in the oven so I used a mix. My daughter suggested adding some rosemary needles/leaves to the batter. Oh My! It was SO good. Add a little butter... When I came to, this is what I found:

I'm not sure where it went.