Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

Yesterday I made myself a cup of tea, sat down at the table in my kitchen to reflect, and my eye set onto the 3 teeny tiny plant pots I have sitting on my kitchen window sill. My mind lapsed into a revery of day dreaming, one full of clichés- the hot African sun, the endless blue skies, thick green grass beneath my bare feet.
Perhaps the hot African sun was more longing than missing (Summer was not the same scorcher we enjoyed last year), but the idea of seeing the endless blue sky, and walking out onto my own patch of grass is definitely something I can’t enjoy here. I do realise that this is what we have chosen for ourselves for now, and what will be, MUST be.
Despite this knowledge, I still despair the demise of several pot-plants, most notably, my ever-indulgent herbs.

I’m going to assume you’ve had the experience of growing a herb plant or two: herbs don’t require much effort to reap the benfits. I love how in the summer at Netherby (Moms’ garden), her mint plants would run amok among the rose-bush standards, they would stand a meter high, their leaves so big that you barely needed more than 5 to make mint vinegar for the Sunday Roast Lamb.
I discovered basil as a young student at Christina Martins’ in Durban, but it was only in 2003 when I moved to Jozi, and lived with my cousin that I fell in love with the idea of having my own herb garden. For the few years that we lived close to each-other, I would spend many hours chilling with her and her family. I used to love offering to help make dinner, mostly because they grew so many of their own herbs, and I loved walking out in the early evening, being able to breathe in the heady scent of thyme, rosemary, rocket, basil, sage, parsley, mint-they had them all.

After Anton and I married, and bought a house, I converted the ornamental garden of dwarf conifers and lavendar bushes to a small vegetable patch. I discovered how oregano was a nifty ground cover, and filled a random corner patch, which always stayed green enough to throw into pizza sauce, or Weber Chicken.
In our first year, we made the mistake of planting 18 tomato seedlings in a 3 meter by 2 meter space. With glorious rains, and warm sun, we ended up with a forest of tomato plants just turning red as we headed away on a two week holiday. By the time we returned, the tomatoes had burst their skins, dropping their seeds into the soil. We have never had to replant one single tomato seedling since.
The year after the tomato forest debacle, I planted a tray of basil seedlings among the tomatoes, naïve to the fact growing basil is like having a goldfish- they will grow as big as the habitat in which they are. (In fact, most herbs are like this- Moms’ mint is proof of it). The basil seedlings grew much like my pregnant belly that year, and in November while recuperating from my second caeserean, and Mom came to stay, we ate home made basil pesto on almost everything- I reaped three glass bottles after slaying those basil plants.
The truth of the matter is that herbs are really just weeds- I learnt that when I left the basil and rocket plants to grow. We didn’t have to plant basil seedlings ever again either- those seeds dropped off the 1.2meter high bushes, and lay dormant among the tomato seeds- symbolic of how we eat tomato and basil on our dinner plates.
When I set about to plant rocket, Mom recommended I contain it in a pot, like I had done with my mint, and I am glad I did. For a summer I had to take rocket to work to get rid of it- I had so much, and Anton is not very keen on its unique peppery flavour. As summer went on, the rocket started seeding, its heavy fronds bending over the edge of the pot, kissing the grass below. A few weeks after the grass had been mowed, and the seeds from the rocket plant had been severed by the blades of the lawn mower, scattering themselves in the soil, I was horrified to see rocket shoots bearing through the grass… Anton had spent so much time fixing our lawn, and he would have been very unhappy to see it being overrun by rocket, so as each new shoot peeped through, I had to tug it out. Just as if it was a weed.
I had 2 thyme plants that I put into big pots. These thyme plants had been wedding favours at a friends’ wedding, and I was really happy that they flourished as they did.
Trying to get rosemary to flourish was more painstaking- I went through 4 plants, planted in 4 different places before one set roots properly, and didn’t die on me. One thing is for sure, rosemary does not like a pot, and it was only happy when I planted it in the rocky soil behind my kitchen. Granted, it soaked up alot of sun, growing taller, and thicker, its leaflets dark green and spongy, its scent so distinct every evening that Anton even admitted to me recently that he misses it.

Fast forward to our new lives here, and I have realised that growing my own herbs successfully had nothing to do with my talents as a green-fingered lass, and more to do with just living in the space we had in South Africa. I have learnt that the secret to a happy herb garden is full sun, and space. Of which we currently have neither.

Towards the end of winter this year, we made friends with a couple who live in an apartment 5 kilometers away, which is pretty much considered out of town. They have a ground floor space, which comes with a 30m stretch of lawn, and a patio. One wet Sunday afternoon in February, we met in the park for our girls to have a run round together (their daughter is in Alexs’ class), and I think I probably confessed that  I missed our home space in SA, and soon enough we were chatting about plants and gardens. C mentioned that she was really excited because her mint had just started peeping up- and would I like a root or two? Not one to turn away a gift, of course I said yes please, because in all honesty, it was more than just a teeny tiny root of mint, wasn’t it?
Well, the very next morning, there it was, a little pot with 3 mint seedlings in, waiting for me with Alexs’ school bags.

However, trying to grow plants in our apartment is not easy. The only area which gets sun for any length of time is the street side of the batiment, and I suspect the buildings rules regulate that no plants are allowed to be seen on window sills, so this is not an option. I have ummed and aahed about buying window boxes for my north facing kitchen window, but the window itself is so pointless that it would be a struggle to wind my body round the window-frame to water the plants, that I have decided not to waste money on window boxes.

But here it is, the sad truth: I have managed to kill at least 9 plants in the 10 months we have lived in this apartment- 1 thyme pot; 1 varigated ficus tree; 1 orchid; 3 ‘Peace in the Homes’; 2 hyacinth bulbs, and some Ikea flower seeds.

C’s mint was repotted in a slightly bigger pot, and true to mint style, it sent out its runners, multiplied like bacteria, but have never succeeded in growing taller than 5cm. While re-potting this irrepresible mint, I tossed some basil seeds in, and very soon, had a canopy of little basil leaves peeping up. I weeded out the smaller ones to give the bigger ones more space, and later took out 3 seedlings and repotted those. Every third day, I pinched off the top two leaves to encourage it to branch out. One evening I even managed to take off more than a handful, but since then, it has just stopped growing.

In my more reclusive moments, I look at these miniture herb plants, and empathise with them- if your roots are trapped, and you have no real sunlight, you too would just stop growing. But then reality steps in, and I realise that I am not trapped, and that I am still in control of some aspects of my life, and I move on.

I apologise- let me put my moment of reflection aside. What I would like to put t there- does anybody have any bright ideas how to help me out? I know I should really just suck it up and head to the market every week for my box of fresh cut herbs, but it is not the same, is it? Anton commented the other day when cooking lasagne that the dish lacked ‘something’. He confessed how much he missed being able to jst step out into the garden for fresh herbs. As a result, when we did our monthly shop 2 weeks ago, he added a pot of thyme to our shopping basket. I will let you know how long I succeed in having it alive on my window sill.

Watch this space!

Bisous et a tout a l’heure,

xxx