Rock'n Herb Garden

On Saturday, Rhiannon and I went out for an early Mother's Day lunch with both of her Grandmothers. After chowing down at the local restaurant, we headed out to the nursery to pick out some pretty things for each of us.  Although Rhiannon didn't get what she really wanted....they had "yard art" all around the nursery and there were several metal dinosaurs that she fell in love with.  If I had a million bucks that would be so cool to have those whimsical metal sculptures scattered around the gardens.  We'll just have to go back there to "visit" them.

Anyways, I ended up getting a nice sized English Lavender plant (thanks, Mom!).  I had planted one in my rock / herb garden last year but it didn't make it through the winter so had to replace it.  Paul even dug the hole and planted it for me so I didn't have to do a thing!

After the lavender was planted, I sat my butt down and started weeding between the rocks.  Although the rocks are lovely and provide the plants protection from the scratching claws of the chickens, it does make it difficult to weed.  There's no Hula-Hoeing my way out of weeds here; it's a tedious task of hand pulling the undesirable greenery out while trying to avoid the multitude of black widow spiders who seem to appreciate the rocky area to build their webs.  But there's one advantage of having to get up close and personal with all of those weeds; they aren't all "weeds".

Would you lookie there!  Teeny-tiny Basil seedlings!

And bigger Basil seedlings.  Which I did NOT have to plant!

The cilantro reseeded itself in several places as did the yarrow, basil and even a few watermelon.  Had I been wielding the Hula-Hoe, I would have missed those free plants.  I'm extra excited about the basil seedlings as one can never have enough basil, but especially since I didn't buy any basil at the nursery (was too cheap to spend $5 on a basil plant).

The herbs in the rock garden are getting a little big for their britches and I still want to add some German Chamomile, Comfrey, Rosemary, Thyme, Parsley and Lemon Balm so I think I'm going to increase it in size by double.  There's plenty of room for the addition so I'll dig what "grass" (i.e. weeds mixed with some grassy-looking vegetation) there is up, lay down some paper feed sacks and top it with some compost and pulverized goat poop from the goat yard.

I'm pretty happy with this type of rock gardening.  It's been a struggle to plant anything with the chickens running amok but this seems to have done the trick.  And not only is it close to the house (meaning it gets weeded on a sort'a regular basis) but it even kind of reminds me of an "English" type of garden - you know - where it seems as if every kind of plant is just haphazardly thrown into an area, but still looks pretty in it's own discombobulated way.   Which is kind of how I end up gardening anyhow.....even though I don't originally plan it that way.