I do love herbs. I have always wanted a herb garden, and I even had a dream of becoming a herbalist and herbal healer back when I was much younger. Culinary herbs are more my bag now, and this year I grew cilantro (let's not go there, OK?), basil (and we all know how well that turned out, don't we?), chives (which did nothing - I think I planted them too close to the neighbouring peony and they didn't get enough sun) and something wonderful called lemon balm.Part of the mint family, lemon balm gives off a wonderful, lemony scent. I was surprised to find seeds for this at my local purveyor of cheap gardening crap, Wally World, and when I did, I was delighted and didn't hesitate to purchase a package.
Again, I made a huge error when I planted the seeds: I misjudged how large the neighbouring plants would grow. In this case, the neighbouring plants were my bean plants, and if you recall, these were so out of control and I got so many beans I couldn't give them all away - and I froze nearly 3lbs. This is a big problem for me; I have no concept of spacing when it comes to my garden. It doesn't help that the garden itself is small and narrow, and as such I do take some care in where I plant things. But I feel the need to utilize the space as best I can and this has led to some errors in judgment - like with the chives. And this was the case with the lemon balm.
The seeds took forever to sprout and I didn't see any growth poke through my soil for weeks. They have a longer germination time, as I read on the seed package, but even so, these didn't start showing any signs of action for a long time after I expected them to. In the meantime, the wax bean plants took off as if they were on steroids (I used nothing on them, I swear!) and before long, the lemon balm was living in the shadow of the lush bean leaves. As a result, I got a very poor, very small, very stunted crop. When I yanked the bean plants at the end of August, which was when they started to dry up and stop producing (it was almost a relief, I was so overwhelmed with beans), I thought the lemon balm would have a fighting chance. How wrong I was; it never had a chance. Early frosts, blahx3, and I got next to nothing. I was disappointed and annoyed with myself.
I did get a very small amount, and I had to pick them and do something with them just so I could feel slightly less disappointed and annoyed. I decided to make some cookies. Initially, I thought I would make shortbread with lemon balm, but the idea evolved and I got over-ambitious. I also got a shitty result.
I won't even post the recipe because it's an adaptation I made and since it was just an abject failure I don't even want to spend the time typing it out. It was my own fault; I should have known better than to do what I did and I have no on to blame but myself.So, what did I do with the cookies? I took them to my brother & SIL's place for our family dinner and left them there! Jem is like Mikey; he'll eat anything!
