h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I unashamedly pinched today's journal inspiration from KB. I'd been toying with the idea of writing more about bloody oil companies, or some sardonic paragraph or two about how some Brit Expats never mingle with the local people here. But both those two seemed a little dull and miserable things to write about.


So, this is about my Basil Plants. It started with that Keat's poem, the Pot of Basil - the one where Isabella pines away, weeping over a pot of basil in which she has secretly buried the head of her murdered love. I've always had some sort of fascination over the gothic horror of the story, and the futility of her pining away to her very end. Maybe at 15 I thought love would be that way.

This morbid fascination has lasted with me, although I love growing any herb, fruit or vegetable, basil holds the pole position. In the UK you can grow it outside in a hot summer and may even get sufficient leaf to do something with. But the little pots of soft green leaves you can buy of seedling basil don't really have much flavour, although they do liven up a dish purely by their greenness.

So here, I threw some ordinary run of the mill basil seeds into a pot and a few days later the seedlings appeared, I split them up into a few pots and gave some away. The pots I kept have been amazing, the best I've ever had here. (I think the compost has something to do with this, it was good stuff.) With the intense sunshine, it is impossible to compare the resulting basil leaves in flavour with those grown in greenhouses or windowsills in the UK. The intensity of the flavour of the leaves is almost *too* strong, and almost overpowers a tomato and basil salad. Which is hard to do because the tomatoes too have had their fair share of sweet inducing sunshine, and result in good flavoured tomatoes.

I didn't need the head of a mourned loved one to get those basil plants to thrive. Thank heavens!

[Amy P]

Deb

It's not easy to get a head, Basil.

Bravo, paulh

Thank you.

If I had a severed head to hide, I doubt that I'd put it in a pot of basil.

I will have to stop putting ideas in people's heads.

I'd keep it in front of the telly, then it could play head tennis with Ray Winstone during the ad breaks in the football.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxHr_qa_UTs

(sorry)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxHr_qa_UTs

A head in the pot might make the basil faulty

Surely heads should be planted with lettuce? If its green I can kill it, only thing I can grow sussessfully are chillis , even in damp cold England!

I do *have* a friend named Lorenzo, as in the poem. I shall be giving him strange looks now. Or rather his head. And staring at some huge terracotta pots.

Now, with the benefit of all the tv forensic science I realise that a flowerpot would be a flimsy way to hide a body part.

*I realise that a flowerpot would be a flimsy way to hide a body part*

I dunno, Bill and Ben seem to hide themselves quite well in plant pots.