Here it is, everybody:



My first-ever homegrown tomato. Isn't it lovely? I had to stop Beth from chomping into it the minute we picked it off the vine. It was tasty, sweet and flavorful, too. Tomatoes are one of my favorite foods and I am so pleased to have successfully grown some of my own.

But that's about the greatest amount of success I've had with my plants this year. My results have been very mixed, especially with my two favorite herbs, basil and rosemary, which is a shocker, because they've grown abundantly the two other years I've had them.

Here's a rundown of my little gardening attempt so far:

The pots by the front door have certainly abounded. Here's a picture of them when I first planted them. Mint is the pot on the left, bay laurel, trailing rosemary, and golden marjoram in the big reddish pot, and chives in the greenish pot.



And here they are last week:



They've taken off a bit, haven't they? All quite large and lush. Except...wait a minute? Where's the rosemary?

Oh, the rosemary? Here it is:



Those few, tiny, pathetic green spikes, surrounded by the marjoram and bay and mint. That's my poor rosemary. To be fair to the little guy, it was somewhat bigger than that, but it was not looking good. And whenever I clipped some off to use in the kitchen, it just didn't bounce back like it ought to have. This is what it has gotten down to. I guess having it in the pot together with the bay and marjoram was a mistake. The marjoram especially has just taken off and flourished and I guess stole all the pot space and nutrients from my poor little rosemary. Sorry, rosemary.

Our in front of the house we have the rest of the plants: strawberry, lavendar, basil, oregano, parsley and thyme.



The strawberries did okay. They had a few small but super-sweet berries throughout June, which Beth somehow claimed as her own and either gobbled up or shared with Lucy and with Daddy (she rarely thought to share with Mommy, but I took some by force). I wasn't expecting great things from that plant, anyway--just a few to eat here and there. So I wasn't too disappointed.

The lavendar has done pretty well. It bloomed gorgeously and following Heather's example, I've actually used it some in cooking and found that I really enjoy the subtle, rich, somehow smoky flavor it adds to food.

The basil I am disappointed in. For some reason its leaves are small, not big and lush like they ought to be, and have a persistently yellowish tint. I am still hoping to make some pesto out of them, but after I trim enough off it for pesto I think it might be done for the year. Not as successful as my past basils have been, by far.

And now the really wretched-looking one.



I think that the oregano just couldn't handle as much direct sunlight as the front of our house gets. Maybe I should have switched it to a different spot. But I didn't, and thus, it is toast. Look at all the little brown leaves littering the ground around it! That happened suddenly. It had been going along okay, not thriving, but okay, and then almost overnight it seemed like it turned blackish-brown--with just a few tenacious green leaves left. I have actually given up on it and tossed it over on the side of the house by the yard debris bin because it looked so pathetic and haunted me whenever I went out to water.

The parsley (which I never wanted to begin with) was also yellow all the time.

The thyme was okay, but has also gotten kind of brownish.

Oh, I also had one bonus herb: sage!



I did not plant this one. These pretty leaves just sprang to life in the corner of my flowerbed this spring, and when I leaned over to weed them I caught a whiff of a familiar scent. I went inside to my cupboard, pulled out the little ground sage bottle and sniffed: yep, sage. I looked up pictures of it on the Internet to be sure, and I believe it is a variety of purple-leafed sage. I am quite pleased with it, because it's pretty and tasty. I've used it in cooking several times. And I hardly ever watered it and it just thrived all on its own.

Back to the less-successful plants. Although I posted the picture of that one nice tomato at the top, my tomato plants as a whole don't really look all that healthy to me either.



Their bottom leaves started getting yellowish not long after I planted them, and although I tried to look up tomato advice online, and pinched off the dead leaves, and tried both less watering and more watering, nothing really helped. They're still producing, but the leaves persist in their nasty yellowish-grayish tint and I think maybe they would have produced better in the hands of a more knowledgeable gardener.

Here's the one bright spot in my yard:



My lovely, lovely bed of petunias and my nice clematis vine. How can anyone not look at a bed of petunias and be happy? They are so bright and cheerful and they require so little work. Just a little water and lots of sun and they bloom their hearts out. Growing up, my mom always filled two big planters full of petunias that bloomed all summer long, and since then I've always wanted petunias of my own in the summertime.

My clematis is an investment in the future, actually. When we moved in there was a weird spiky plant at the base of the lamppost and I didn't like it, so I pulled it out. I wanted some kind of a vine to climb up it, but I wanted it to be evergreen and I wanted it to be blooming. I asked the nice Master Gardener at the Farmer's Market for advice and she told me of clematis armandii. The very next day I spotted one for sale outside the grocery store. Took it home and it really seems to be doing well. Early next spring, we'll see if it bursts forth in white blooms like it's supposed to.

So that's my gardening for the year. Mixed results. I pretty much feel about my plants the way I did about potty training; I really don't know what I did right and what I did wrong. Too much water? Not enough water? Should I have fertilized more? Is it just too sunny on that side of the house? I had wanted to do an actual garden next year. Nothing huge, but maybe square-foot gardening, like Heidi talks about. But with my not-so-green thumb showing itself year, I'm now thinking that might not be such a good idea.

Anyone who actually knows anything about gardening, please feel free to give me advice!