I got into gardening a couple year ago and it was so addictive! There is just something magic about watching plants grow. I am not a big flower person. But I love all the green leafy plants. Most of my crops are vegetables and herbs. I started with a pair of opposable black thumbs, probably because I grew up in concentrate buildings in China and never had any experiences with living plants. So my instincts about plants are mostly wrong. 🙁 The good news is that I am slowly learning from my mistakes and figuring out my plants one after another.

But regardless, there are some plants doing pretty well in my garden, like tomatoes, salad greens and herbs. Ironically, they are the ones I gave the least attention to. I seeded a few basil earlier this spring and did not even bother to separate the seedlings when I transplanted them into front yard. Boy did they take off! We have already had a few harvests and it seems that basil just grows back overnight after being clipped. Here is today’s trim:

We fell in love with fresh basil because of this Thai curry. I had never had any international cuisine before I came to U.S. Landed in Bay area, California, Thai curry was the first non-Chinese food I ate. I fell in love instantly. Once I figured out how easy it was to cook at home, we have always had coconut milk, fish sauce and red curry paste in our pantry. Now we started to get abundant supply with our basil plants, we discovered this pesto recipe and have been using it for this chicken kebabs. This summer, we started to make home-made pizza like this amazing pizza pie. Now only if we could get our tomato production up to make our own pizza sauce!