patio time

I finally made an herb garden! It’s one of the things that’s been on my to-do list for a really long time.

It started out with new patio furniture. We shopped around a bit, and settled on two Adirondack chairs from Loll. The company is pretty awesome, and the chairs are made from completely recycled plastic, mostly from old milk cartons. 

They are comfortable, durable, and cleanable, but my favorite part is a secret bottle opener built into each chairs’ arm. How’s that for awesome?

We went with white chairs, because I fell in love with a magenta twist cube designed by Frank Gehry.  I’m a sucker for hot pink furniture, apparently.

Once we got the new furniture, our little balcony looked empty, so I convinced hubby that we needed the herb garden right away. We went to several different garden stores, and saw some beautiful stuff:

But no herbs, until we went to Buchannan’s garden center. They had more different types of herbs than I’ve ever seen in my life, all organic and native to Texas. It took us a while to choose planters and plants, but we ended up after the first trip with mild and hot jalapeno plants, basil, thyme, and chives.

This tiny garden makes me so happy! Plus, we’ve actually used the jalapenos every day since getting the plants and once the basil grows a bit we’ll use it on tomatoes. The chives, however, are going to die. Little Bit cannot leave them alone. I turned my back and he had devoured the whole plant.

We went back a few days later and bought him his own planter filled with chives, catnip, and parsley. Again, he ate the two chive plants down to the root. 

He ignored the catnip and parsley completely, but if I break off a catnip leaf and give it to him he plays with it and even licks it a bit before becoming bored. (I’m pretty sure he’s in the 20% of cats that catnip doesn’t affect.)

And later, I’ll show you how we’ve been using the jalapenos!