Our little family of plants here in New Orleans has grown by a few.

First off, we have this Sweet Olive tree that we bought right after we moved in. It is actually an outdoor plant that is supposed to be planted in the ground, but in our excitement at seeing a Sweet Olive tree, we bought it before thinking about things like that. Sweet Olive trees absolutely smell amazing. I wish I had Sweet Olive perfume. Drew was so excited. He likes them so much that last year we even considered naming our design business, Sweet Olive Designs. Yes, they smell that amazing. So we’ll see how the little guy does inside. He should be okay. The foyer gets the right amount of sun that he needs and his roots should only grow until they reach the limit of space that they have in their planter pot, so I don’t see what the problem would be in his indoor existence.

Isn’t his pot pretty? We looked all over for the right size pot that he could grow into a little and that also looked nice. The options at garden centers were ugly and actually pretty expensive. (Well, for our budget at least and for one that big) This one we actually found at Burlington Coat Factory of all places. I’d never even been to a Burlington Coat Factory before and I definitely didn’t expect them to have a Home section. But they did and they had this lovely planter pot. (They also have a better and cheaper selection of men’s ties as well. That was our original purpose of shopping there. Drew got a promotion at work and now has to wear ties everyday to work. We shopped at Dillard’s last week for some more nice dress shirts and ties and just one tie was over $60!! How ridiculous! Not to mention that not that many of them were very pretty either. Someone at work told him to try Burlington Coat Factory and they did have a nice selection of pretty ties and with good prices too!)

We also have two small little basil sprigs that are ‘babies’ of our other basil plant. (I think it is a lettuce leaf basil, but I could be mistaken on that) My mom pulled them off when she was here and told me that if I put them in a glass of water, they would grow roots and I could plant them and have more basil plants. So that’s what I did. They’ve been growing in a glass jar of water in our windowsill for the last two weeks.

I was surprised at how fast they developed such big root systems! I figured that their roots were finally big enough that they could survive on their own in the wild our windowbox. Our windowbox is doing quite well so far. All my plants are growing like crazy. I’ve used the basil and the oregano in multiple recipes so far and they also taste quite delicious!

My new baby basils are right there in the front, in the center of the windowbox. Right next to their basil mommy. Hopefully they will adjust to the soil and their other herb friends quite well. That is as long as Drew remembers to water them while I’m gone for the next two weeks!! I hope you are reading this Drew. You better not kill my plants.