Pot of Basil

At last, we have the internet back!! That made my day, we were expecting to have it back on Monday 21st April. I would like to welcome my co-blogger & friend Ms Cocoa who has been posting in my absence. I hope she will keep posting!

I had a few blog ideas in my blogging absence (e.g. a squirrel that I may or may not have ran over) but now they seem slightly out of date. Today has been farily non-eventful, just boring commuting to and from work and not much to do once there. I had a desk health and safety session this afternoon, about sitting in a good posture at the right height and holding the mouse correctly.

Here is my basil plant. Veggie Hubby and I bought it after Christmas to make a pasta recipe that required fresh basil and chives. Unfortunatlely the chives didn't last long, but the basil is still going strong. I was worried about leaving it when we went to Brittany for 10 days, and when we got back I thought my fears were realised as it looked dead. I gave it loads of water, and it somehow revived, and is now even flowering. I didn't even realise that basil could flower. At the weekend I removed the remaining dead leaves from it, and now it looks healthy again. I am amazed by the resilience of plants, how they can come back to life. It is a pet substitute I think, as we can't have pets while living in this flat. We rarely eat any basil from our plant, as we usually prefer to use dried basil, which perhaps defeats its purpose, but it is nice having it living in our kitchen.

Basil always reminds me of the poem by Keats 'Isabella; or the Pot of Basil.' In this bizarre gothic poem, Isabella's brothers disapprove of her love Lorenzo, lure him to the woods and murder him. Isabella sees a vision of him in her dreams, and he tells her where to find his body. She digs him up from his grave, and then plants Lorenzo's severed head in a pot of basil where she lovingly cultivates it. "And so she ever fed it with thin tears, Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew, So that it smelt more balmy than its peers" Eventually her brothers find out, steal her basil pot and she dies through sorrow. "O cruelty, To steal my Basil-pot away from me!"