About that Rosemary Bush . . .

Years ago, in my other life in the inner city of Houston, I used to admire the rosemary bush in the yard of my friends Marguerite & Richard Pulley.

It was extraordinary – enormous & lush.

Not unlike a very large, very radiant, very fecund woman.  Only verdant.

When I exiled myself back to the suburbs of my youth, I built a garden & planted a bit of rosemary.

Which grew even larger than the rosemary bush in the Pulley’s back yard.

For years that bush was used to flavor chicken & marinara sauce & stuffed into our turkeys.

A ruthless, hard freeze annihilated all but a bit of the rosemary bush.

I planted the bit & a new, lusher, more prolific, more gorgeous rosemary bush emerged.

A bush I have been nurturing for twenty years.

 Several years ago, I cleared out the garden of intruding aloe vera plants (who knew they were so damned tenacious).  And I reduced the rosemary bush to a third of her size.

I hung dried rosemary everywhere (thinking it might ward off zombies if not vampires).  It was only later that I learned one can make pesto from rosemary . . .

The Mother of all rosemary bushes thrived & from her, I have raised three extraordinary young bushes.  I gave one to my friend Carolyne Massey.  Another I left in the garden.  And the last I placed in a planter in the front yard.

Yesterday, someone (who will remain nameless – I leave it to the reader to ascertain the identity of the culprit) decided that we needed more real estate in the garden & dug up Mother Rosemary.

When I confronted the culprit, he said:

But we have other rosemary bushes.

  

I held my temper, I held my tongue.  Taking a deep breath, I demanded that he go out into the yard, dig a whole, & replant Mother Rosemary.

In his defense, which is weak at best – who digs up another person’s plants – he just did not get what Mother Rosemary means to me.

If she does not survive in her new location, there will be another post.

Some things are sacred.  Mother Rosemary is one.

Baby Rosemary.