Things did not stay as right as I would have liked with my little herbs in front of our house. The mint grew wildly, as expected, but developed a scaly quality to its leaves that was neither delicious nor attractive. Then the scaliness hopped over to both the lemon balm and the rosemary, and, well, that made me decide it was time to start again.
Last Sunday, I composted the dirt out of three of my four herb pots with a plan of starting from scratch, rather than continuing to walk by the pots, glaring out of the side of my eye at the scaly, ill-kempt herbs in the corner.
The sage, after a good weeding and a vigorous cut-back, got a reprieve, though to be honest, it doesn’t look as healthy as I’d like, either. It does have plenty of new growth going for it, so there’s that.
Though I had time to do that bit of clean-up, I didn’t have time to go poke around our local hardware store for replacement options. I’m considering some kind of easy-maintenance winter flower, or even just planting some kind of greens (kale or spinach or something along those lines) that might be easy to keep from killing.
Cyclamen might be a good option—it is planted everywhere in Oakland over the winter, but like all things common, those flowers get a little boring after awhile. Whatever goes in has to like morning sun, but not much direct light the rest of the day, which also limits what might work.
Any brilliant ideas? I’m always open to options.
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