Look at all these little herb plants! My human is planting them on the back patio this week.

My human got herbs she uses the most — at least the ones available at the garden store. They didn’t have chives, but they did have basil (two kinds!), thyme, rosemary, sage, and parsley.

They’ll be going in the built in planter here. She’ll plant some vegetables in the other, bigger wall planters soon.

For fun, she put a couple of things in this planter box — some spring onions from the market that she didn’t get around to using, and a piece of ginger that had sprouted. That was only a couple of days ago, and the onions are already growing new green shoots.

I know this cilantro plant looks kind of lonely all the way over here, but this is the best spot for it because it’s the only part of the patio that gets some shade, and they don’t like it sunny all the time. Plus April is late for this herb — it’s more of a winter plant.

I know a lot of people are worried about food prices and thinking of starting gardens. And while that’s a good thing to do — you can even grow some plants in containers in an apartment! — my human has an even more practical reason for attempting an herb and vegetable garden. She mostly makes food for herself and sometimes her boyfriend, and so much of what she buys winds up going to waste. And these days especially, it’s wrong to be wasteful.

So she figured if she grew the plants she uses most in a garden (at least the ones we can grow here), she can just come out and get what she needs. And anything left over she can easily give away. Because let’s face it, what sounds more appealing: “Take something from my garden,” or “Hey, do you want these greens that have been sitting in my fridge for a week? They’re only a little slimy.”

Of course, when we were done on the patio, we went around to the bridge for some portraits.

Yes, I looked around for the peach kitty but I didn’t see him. He’s actually the reason we stopped planting catnip. He destroyed the plants we had! And pests finished off the leftover, ruined plants. That was a sad end for them.