Oregano

Once we started our vegetable garden in 2004 (ten years ago!), I thought it would be nice to have one plot dedicated to herbs. I planted the Simon and Garfunkel herbs (parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme) along with some tarragon, chervil, and oregano. I was training the rosemary into a kind of simple topiary in the center of the plot; it was one tall woody stem with a ball of leaves at the top. Just as it was getting nice, it froze.

Fresh oregano in a planter box. It will bloom with little purple flowers later this summer.

I had a hell of a time keeping the herbs going and the weeds down, until the weeds won and I gave up on the herb garden. But we still have the herbs. The sage came from a cutting I made from another patch in the yard, and that's still growing well. I moved the thyme and planted some new rosemary against the southern wall of the house where they've thrived ever since. Tarragon hangs on in a pot that spends its winters indoors.

The oregano escaped the garden plot and comes up every year as part of the lawn around the garden. The bunch in the photo above was put into a planter box. It, too, comes back every year. This year I planted some parsley seeds in the box beside it. And I've put chervil seeds out again with the spring crops.

Are you going to Scarborough Fair? And I do know that the song is a traditional English ballad from way back, but S&G's version is best known to us Yanks. And while Jamie Oliver and his countrymen say [o-re-GA-no], we say [o-RE-ga-no]. Don't know why.