Herb garden update.

A proper gardener would sew seed and patiently wait for a plant to grow thereby saving him a good few pounds. I've never professed to be a proper gardener though and I've little patience when I know winter is on it's way and the garden will start to look naked without it's summer colour.
The garden centre has taken it's cut of my wages again when I bought four herbs for ten pounds. So now, I have taken the Standard Bay out of the pot by the front door (where I liked it very much) and used it for some height at the beginning of my swirl of Box. I was wondering whether to top and tail the swirl with Rosemary topiary but I didn't really want two Rosemarys and I thought it might trick the eye into thinking the area was quite small if there were matching 'bookends' fairly close together. This way there is a definite dominant end with the taller Bay and a 'full stop' (at least in my mind) at the other end.
In between these plants I have dotted three different evergreen sages, a Tricolour, Purple and an Icterina ( a two tone green) which I hope will grow out to meet each other to produce a sort of pool of Sage; like an artist's palette with circles of colour blending into each other. I've put a Golden Thyme nearer the Bay and circling the stem of the Bay are (for now) six Alpine Strawberries. I wondered about using Lavender but think it will get too leggy and overwhelm the Box which is notoriously slow growing.
As I was planting these up the rain started and I realised how waterlogged the earth was. This is not good news for herbs, they like Mediterranean conditions; stony soil, little water and lots of light. In my patch they only get the light. I really should have dug in some drainage material but didn't have the time so I've planted them straight in, watered them to settle them down and spread the broken bits of shell that we bought for chicken grit (as hens don't have teeth they need grit in their diet to work on the food they digest).









I've come in as I have a fireplace to work on this afternoon but I'm happier having herbs in the bed. I will keep an eye on them and if they seem to be struggling I will give them better conditions but for now they have a few hours of peace before I tweak some of the sage leaves off to accompany the leg of lamb we have for dinner. Life is sweet.