I’d love to tell you I have a magical green thumb, that I’m a plant wizard that who can grow anything, anywhere. My husband would laugh, and rightfully so. It is a miracle when indoor plants survive my forgetful nature. If the information card on a houseplant I’m thinking of buying states, “This plant loves neglect,” then that’s the plant I buy. However, I have managed, with the help of my garden-savvy friend, Christine Bellushi, to plant a kitchen garden and two large container gardens of herbs. I step out my back door and right there on my deck is lettuce. Snip, snip and I have a salad.  Much as I love our farmers’ markets, this is even better.

The salad greens from my planter were the source of our Sunday lunch this past weekend—a mixed green salad with the addition of arugula (from another pot not shown) with a golden balsamic dressing.

When I’m in the wine country in the Willamette Valley, I love stop at a Red Ridge Farms, a fabulous garden center in Dayton, OR. With over 300 varieties of herbs including culinary, medicinal, and landscaping botanicals, plus olive trees, I can’t help myself when I stop there. I load my trunk with a garden flat full of  lettuce starts and herbs. This past trip I bought scented geraniums (I didn’t know the flowers are edible), two lemon verbena plants, and two celery herb plants. The latter are grown for their celery-flavored leaves, not for their stalks.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress and success—I haven’t killed anything yet and, honestly, that is miracle.