This is not my herb garden, but a couple of days ago I decided that I want to get my herb garden going. Again. The last time I grew stuff I had cilantro, basil, lettuce and a few other things growing in the kitchen and the yard. I think all of the after school activities my children (and I) had going on diverted the focus I used to devote to it. I think this idea has been with me since I was at my parents’ house a few years ago for my sister’s wedding, where there were these amazing, regal okra plants growing in the back yard. They had to have been about 8 or 9 feet tall. They most beautiful thing about them, to me, was how they towered as a testament to the people my parents have always been.
When I was a little kid, Mom grew strawberries in the back yard. She has grown roses, succulents, ferns – and with Dad- peas, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers and a huge fig tree that still stands in the back yard. They have cooked, canned and frozen some and given their friends or people in the community in need some.  Some of my earliest and fondest memories of my South Louisiana family include my grandmother’s canned figs, munching on fresh sugar cane and the tons and tons of pecans we would take home with us from my great uncle’s orchard.  A lot of times, I have these ideas that I think are great, new ideas, when they turn out not to be new ideas at all. At least not to me.