oh, happy day!
By mew
Tags: aromatherapy in the garden, basil, cooking with herbs, edging plants, growing herbs, Herbs, homemade pesto, large-leaf basil, mint, pesto
A lovely large-leafed basil plant sending up the beginnings of its bloom stalk.
I’ll keep this short today. In addition to my regularly scheduled life, I’m making pesto — as I said I wanted to a while back. Today is the day. My kitchen will be filled with one of my top 10 favorite scents. F. thinks the smell of basil is really old-fashioned and says I remind him of his grandmother.
I say, “Old-fashioned? Who cares?” The scent of basil is so evocative, so immediate and powerful, and yet somehow haunting, longing. If unrequited love were made herb, it would be basil.
And fragrance is one of the reasons I like wearing long skirts in the garden (not after rain), so that when my skirts brush the plants edging the paths, I get an aromatherapy halo rising around me, and trailing after me in my wake. This year, my edging choices were basil, basil, apple mint, nasturtium, basil, marigolds (yech! but they are a good companion plant — more on that another time), more basil, spearmint, sorrel, oregano, cilantro, dill, and a different kind of basil. Oh, and variegated thyme.
(I suspect the scents of the various mints, being cousins to catnip, are what draws the cats to rub up against my ankles when I’m in the garden. I’m going to post a picture of that soon. So charming, to have purring friends materialize out of the woods almost every single time.)
So I don’t really care if it makes me sound grandmotherly to admit to a love affair with the fragrance of basil. It’s delicious.
And the taste of pesto?
Bliss!
postscript: F. can’t be expected to know that. He’s never tasted pesto before. Well, he has, in soups and stews this winter, without realizing it. But that was store-bought paste in a tube carried here from Atlanta, mixed in with a whole lot of other flavors. He’s never tasted it by itself on pasta, fresh from the garden. I’ll let you know how it goes…
post postscript: Don’t use the blossoms if you’re making pesto. I just liked this photograph. That was not a culinary hint!
post post postscript: Obviously, this is Green in the ongoing saga of the photo challenge.
Victory Garden Redux 
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