Friday, June 24, 2011

Thyme for some fun!

My neighbor Bob, who is about 90 years old, and I have gone rogue. We have decided, for the second summer in a row, to ignore a condo association rule and go ahead and plant herbs in our little patches of dirt. I was successful last year only with parsley and cilantro. I started from seed and the basil, mint and lemon thyme never "showed up". Bob had lots of basil and mint last year, and his mint has come back this year with a vengeance. I decided to plant plants this year and my basil, thyme, parsley and cilantro are all doing great!

Bob and I were chatting yesterday and discussing whether or not we think we'll get written up for participating in such a horrid crime this summer. We think we're pretty safe for two reasons:


  1. The nosey neighbors that like to report every misstep are too busy checking to see if Scott's truck is out front one minute after midnight, if anyone has the so-ugly-the-whole- neighborhood suffers snow shovel still out on their deck, or horror of all horrors, if someone has walked their dog within 5 feet of thier front door (yes, walked it, not pooped, just walked it)

  2. We're pretty confident that these nosey neighbors aren't smart enough to know a basil leaf from a weed from the ridiculous landscaping the association pretends to take care of.

The kids and I took today off, meaning we haven't left the house. We were up early and watched our favs, Curious George and Cat in the Hat. We played catch, kick and throw for quite a while, this is currently JB's fav to do. We baked some cookies, danced to the Go Fish video, and did endless puzzles. By 10:30 I was ready for a change in scenery so we went outside and did our usual...sidewalk chalk (and for the record, I keep waiting for the letter from the association saying, "your children aren't allowed to have any fun here, please stop using sidewalk chalk or we'll fine you 2 million dollars). We tired pretty quickly of that activity so we checked on our herbs. Miss M wanted to taste them so we tasted all of ours then we walked back to Mr. Bob's house and tasted all of his (we share...there is a strange thrill in walking to the back neighbor's house with scissors and a baggie to borrow some illegal dill :) ) It was fun, although I am a little worried that they will now stick all leaves in their mouth. I've had the appropriate conversation with them about that but you know how it goes. Next time we're at Tyler Park I'm pretty sure JB will be eating a maple leaf while Miss M goes around licking all the poison ivy!!


Oh, and they liked the parsley and the dill, spewed the oregano and the mint out. Thyme, cilantro, basil and something unidentifiable in Bob's garden were tolerated :)

2 comments:

  1. You need to move to L-town with me. Not only do I have random plants growing everywhere, but my front door doesn't match ANY of my neighbors. ;)

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  2. 2 things about this made me laugh!
    1 - We planted a garden this year and had to fill out a dig permit and some other ridiculous form, then have 2 different people come out and inspect our lawn and one of them put orange dots on the grass where we couldn't plant stuff.
    2 - No lie, when I was little my neighbor called the cops because I was doing graffiti on the sidewalk (yes it was chalk, and I was 4). :)

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