Surviving With An Herb Garden

By Mallory
May 5, 2014

For my dad’s 60th birthday I decided that we both needed an herb garden. You’re allowed to buy yourself things too right, for someone else’s birthday? 😉

For me, the hardest part of survivorship has been learning to take care of myself. Before acting as a caregiver for my mother during her cancer illness, and before my own cancer diagnosis and treatments, I would have told you that I was just too busy to worry much about self-care. I worked out and I slept as much as possible…other than that I studied, worked, danced, and partied…I was basically your run of the mill, hardworking undergraduate student. Fast forward a few years though…add in a few crises along the way…and my day to day is much different.

This project is probably not for the cancer patient…when I was going through treatments, I wasn’t allowed to play with dirt. Starting an herb garden is a great activity for a caregiver or survivor though! You might even encourage the kiddies to plant a few herbs or flowers of their own and see what happens 🙂

I’ve never had an herb garden so I’d like to add here that this is definitely not a post designed to teach you the best way to cultivate and grow plants. This is, however, a post designed to show that new things are always on your horizon and that self-care comes in many forms. For me, self-care means trying new things, spending time outside, and believing in the process instead of the outcome. This past week, self-care meant attempting to start an herb garden!

I started at the hardware store, and bought the pots, soil, and plants. I chose 8″ pots in the hopes that I wouldn’t have to repot anything for a while. I decided to start with basil, cilantro, lemon balm, chocolate mint (yea, that is a real thing!), and rosemary. With a storm on the horizon, I wanted to repot all of the little plants before the rain hit!

As a small side note: Are herbs vegetables or flowers? 😉

I also replanted a succulent that disappeared over the summer from a backyard pot, as well as an ivy plant that I accidentally let outside for too long last fall.