Growing herbs

Since I got a new apartment, much closer to work, I've been trying to add more greens to the place.  I've now got something of a small indoor herbal garden going.  I say if you want plants in the apartment, why not have them smell nice and edible?  And, you can always use some of these for your tea.

So far, I got basil, parsley, mint, peppermint, thyme, rosemary, oregano, a tarragon.  Although I know where I would use most of these herbs, tarragon is a bit of a mystery.  Basil is probably the least easy to control, but it seems to grow just fine now.  I tried to be careful when growing basil by using little water as recommended, but in my case, it seemed to backfire.  Also, the chill of the air from the open window probably didn't help. 70 degrees F is best recommended.  The other herbs seem to do just fine. I mostly got the plants from Trader Joes and Sprouts.

Basil has always been a bit of a favorite, as well as mint, because they have the most distinct flavor personality, if you will.  Basil does pretty well on pizza, and any kind of meat.  Quite common in Thai food, of course.  Still, for my cooking, my general go-to is still mostly the good ol' sesame oil and sea-salt, which tends to go with any kind of meat I know.  From what I can tell, herbs, being more subtle, tend to work best when your food is a bit bland.  I tend to find this best to use when grilling fish.
 
I've been checking out a page on Garden Glove
(not Garden Grove) which has some interesting ideas of organizing herbal plants using old items.

I'm hoping to add even more plant life in this apartment.  More nature, less walls.  More greens, less white.

Several years ago, I used to wok at a landscape architecture company as a graphic designer and a 3D artist. Aside from learning to distinguish between a Mexican Fan Palm tree and a Canary Island Palm tree, I remember something one of the landscape architects told me that had always stuck with me.  He said there is always a competitive animosity between architects and landscape architects--architects always want show off their building, while landscape architects always want hide them. It is an interesting dynamic. One can't have just the building or it'll feel lifeless and one can't have just the trees or it'd be a forest.

This is all pretty fun for me since I'm a big fan of life-hacks and DIU (do-it-yourself).  Yesterday I unclogged the garbage disposal using the stick end of a plunger, inspired by a Dummies site.  I didn't even know they had a For Dummies site.

Pretty cool.