When the winter chill fades away, I highly suggest growing your own herbs. Last spring, I tried to have a green thumb. Joe always jokes around and calls my dad “Farmer Choi” (yes my maiden name is Choi, which a lot of you probably don’t know, and I kind of miss), because he is a ridonculous gardener. We don’t know where he learned it from, but he was always into it. In fact, every spring, people would stop and gawk at our front lawn to see these beautiful colorful tulips sprouting everywhere and our perfectly round trimmed hedges. In the backyard, there were always 2 Korean pear trees, 1 persimmon tree, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, perilla leaves, and Korean peppers. He always does an exceptional job maintaining all of this on his own, but I have not inherited this gene.
In fact, when we lived in New Jersey, I brought home a rosemary plant from Whole Foods, and it died within 2 weeks. I also had house plants here and there, and none of them made it alive. So you can imagine my nervousness about taking the plunge to try to take care of my own herbs. The advantage I have in living in California is that there is plenty of sun and the weather is pretty mild year-round. The disadvantage is that we don’t own our own house yet, so I would have to grow herbs in pots on a shared balcony. But I figured, eh what the hey.
My sister told me to use organic soil with good drainage and so we did. We decided to transfer the baby herb plants into the bigger pots indoors because honestly, we don’t have much space to do it on our shared balcony and it can get kinda messy. So out came the newspapers and the 2 of us literally got our hands dirty. I settled on basil, thyme and parsley, because those are probably the 3 herbs I use the most. I wanted to get rosemary and cilantro too, but Joe told me to simmer down until I proved I wouldn’t kill these guys.
Long story short, these guys made it all through spring, summer and fall. But the winter eventually made them shiver and wither. I think I could’ve kept them alive, but we had to go away for about a month and I didn’t want to bother one of my friends to nurse them back to life. So with a saddened heart, I eventually threw the shriveled guys away. It really did feel like a loss. After all, it came to the point where Joe would ask me if I “fed” my babies that day. We took turns rotating them in and out of direct sunlight, and brought them in when it got too cold at night. They were kind of a pain in the butt, but definitely worth it. For all that time, we had fresh herbs at our beckon call, which also saved us money, and inspired me to come up with more and more recipes using them. They brightened up our meals and cheerfully brightened up our doorway. I think when the time’s right, I’ll invest in doing it again.
