Yesterday, a momentous occasion occurred: Alex and I harvested the first of the lemon basil! And by that I mean we cut the tops off three of the seven basil plants, but hey, I was excited.
I was making curry for dinner. I had been looking forwards to it all week, because I knew that it called for fresh basil, and instead of buying it from the grocery store, I was going to use my very own, home-grown stuff. It felt like a milestone, the first time getting an ingredient from the back yard instead of out of a plastic-wrapped styrofoam container.
It also seems so fitting that the first thing we harvested was basil. My Dad is a basil farmer, and for as long as I can remember, summers with him have revolved around basil. If you hug my Dad between the beginning of June and the beginning of September (or later, if it doesn't frost), you'll smell basil, even if he hasn't been to the field that day. The first solid food I ever ate (or so the story goes) was sweet basil pesto. Yesterday, as I stood there grinning and holding those first stalks of basil, I felt very much my like father's daughter.
There is something so magical, and yet also wonderfully simple about eating something you picked moments ago from where it was growing not ten feet away from where you're sitting. I've experienced this before, but it was different this time, with my own garden. I felt proud, but humbled at the same time. Yes, I planted the seeds and tended them, but really, they did all the work. (I still find it hard to believe that the plants I see all came from such tiny little seeds.) I guess grateful would be a good way to sum up how I felt, sitting there in the yard with Alex, eating curry seasoned with lemon basil. Grateful and full of wonder.
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| Before |
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| After | |
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| The trick with basil is to cut it right above where two new sets of leaves are coming out. Cutting it this way makes it get nice and big and bushy. |
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| Yummm! |
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