Basil Shout-Out

About a year ago, our friend RT gave us a small basil start in a red plastic solo cup (the kind you used to drink cheap beer out of in college). We had high hopes for the future bushels of basil that would yield enough pesto to keep us in pasta and paninis until Jesus came back. But unfortunately, for the entirety of the year, it remained a stem about 2" long with only two small, pathetic looking leaves. In fact, it never grew beyond the rim of the cup in its long, sad life. We couldn't bring ourselves to harvest the two sad leaves lest we leave the plant no means by which to photo-synthesize itself into 2 new leaves (NOTE: I don't know anything about science.), so we left it be. But recently, in our whirlwind of local sustainable obsession, we replanted it into our "urban-window-herb-garden" (READ: A pot on the window sill.) and it took off! It's hibernation ended in kind of a ugly-duckling type transformation. You can see it here on the left, tall and spindly but sprouting leaves like crazy!


So we decided to carry out our first harvest. Though I suggested we observe an 8-day celebration in which we would sleep in an outdoor lean-to like on the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot (See, a degree is theology IS relevant! Take that, world.), we decided we'd just take some kitchen sheers and go at it. And we did. Here is our first harvest: (Praise God for the abundance of blessings!)


We thought pesto an appropriate use of this radical abundance, so we started to make preparations. Unfortunately, we did have to supplement our crop with the teensiest-weensiest bunch of additional basil bought at the farmer's market and show here in the right:


But overall, I thought our home-grown stuff really made the difference. So shout out to RTT for helping us on our first steps to becoming urban farmers. We hope to have you over for pesto soon!