Sage advice

Yikes, I fell off the Web log wagon!

When you fall off the Web log wagon it is hard to climb back on. Things collect that you want to explore in print and there are too many to choose from and it gets overwhelming. If you skip just one day it begins to collect.

So... as Oprah would put it, "What is going on??"

Imagine me sitting on the couch being asked that on her show.

For one thing I am the person in my colleague Susan Martin's column today with the sage plant being stifled in the car trunk.

As I said in her column, hijacked for my purposes, the sage plant survived. I soared like an eagle and actually planted it! I pulled up bishop's weed so there was enough room. The bishop's weed is not hard to pull up but the trouble is, it comes back. So every few days I have been pulling it up again.

It is a war I will ultimately lose. But still, it makes me feel as if a little sliver of the garden is under my control. Also I do have this sage plant which is not dead yet. To reward myself I went and got a basil plant. It is not in the dirt yet but today I think I can get it in there.

I will then have an herb garden!

If you have two herbs that is an herb garden.

And the beauty of an herb garden is, it is never too late to add to it. It is probably too late to put in tomato plants or anything else but I can continue to add herbs. On a conservative basis of course. Every time I actually plant one, after that I am allowed to get another one and plant it.

The great thing about sage, and the reason I planted it first, was because it can last through the winter. I used to have a sage plant. I used to have a lot of plants! I do not know what happened, only that everything died.

But my sage plant, I remember digging for it in the snow and it was there! That is a wonderful feeling, in the middle of winter, to have fresh herbs from your garden! And sage is delicious on pumpkin and squash.

BLP ... Before Leonard Pennario ... I used to do a lot of gardening. Well, I will not lie and say I was any great shakes at it. But I used to give it the old college try. That was before I started writing this book which, I feel sometimes like an ant climbing a mountain.

On the bright side, if my garden is a mess now, at least I have a darn good excuse!