Of Plants and Other Things

This is what I was confronted with yesterday when I went to water my hoya. Look closely....
Do you see them??? Oh my gosh it is aphids or some other little bug. A little, yellow, menacing bug with black legs that moves and jumps. I about had a cow, and I don't even have a uterus anymore. I have to tell you first that I love my hoya. It is a start from a plant that my mom has and she got her cutting from my grandmother. I love my hoya. But I hate bugs and I REALLY hate the color yellow. So you can imagine my distress when I saw them.

Here is another shot in case you missed the menace of the first one.

And here is one more image just so that you can sympathize with the fact that when I saw them I went ballistic, I went postal, I got out the bug destruction chemicals and proceeded to carry out a "scorched bug" campaign. I carefully carried the pot outside onto the deck and I sprayed those little suckers six ways from Sunday. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Infest my grandma's hoya will you! I think not!

There, all better.

And speaking of plants as we were. Did you know that you can take a cutting from an already existing basil plant and get it to root? Did you know that? If you did then why didn't you tell me cuz it certainly would have made life easier around here. You see, I love basil. I love the smell of it. I love the taste of it. I would go out into the garden and stick my face down into it and just take a big old sniff. I would marry basil and have little basil babies.....if I wasn't married to HHBL and love him so much. I would do all these things except.....
This is what happens when I plant basil out in the garden. The marauders from the woods deer come and help themselves because, evidently they love basil too and want to stick their nasty big deer faces into it and not only take a big sniff but eat it all up too. Pigs.

So, I got several new basil plants and I have just been keeping them inside so that they would be available when I need them and so that we could have this
This my friends is homemade pizza, which is what we had for dinner Friday night. HHBL and I like it with a lot of fresh basil on it and we can't have it that way if there is no fresh basil on hand. So, about August 15 or so we had pizza with basil on it. Only I cut too much basil. But not wanting to waste it I just stuck the left over into a small glass with some water in it and put it on the windowsill thinking I would use it soon. Only then I had to go out of town to take Shoe Queen to college and then things got busy and The Engaged One had to go to Africa and....you get the drift.

So Friday I go and harvest some of my basil in the pots that I had stuck out on the deck to catch the rain and I also go to use the basil that is still in the glass on the windowsill and this is what I find....
Are those roots that I see coming out of the stem of the basil? By golly they are. And with that realization the angels sang, the sun came out and I realized that if this worked I might somehow be able to have fresh basil all winter long.
So, I potted the basil upstarts up in a pot that Shoe Queen painted for me many moons ago and we will see how things turn out. And they had better turn out good cuz I am counting on my basil fix all winter long.