Iowa Falls: our place to grow

I love the idea of having fresh herbs and when I wanted them this fall and winter I was surprised that fresh basil at the store was like 3 bucks for a normal amount needed for your dish! Yeah I know who in there right mind would pay that right? So I did some research and found that herb gardens are extremely easy to take care of since they have so many types of scents, bugs and critters don't normally eat your herbs! So I now am a proud herb Gardner. I hope to have enough yield to get me through the late part of fall onto early winter. so far I have planted:

Italian Basil (my fav. and plan on using it a lot in the cooking that I do! especially on or in pizza!)
Lavender (for who knows what but couldn't resist it)
Sage (we will see how that turns out, I don't know what to do with it yet...)
Cilantro (very excited to use this in my Mexican dishes and in salads!)
Parsley (so far this has been the one to grow the most, and I plan on using it a lot for any extra flavoring I need!)
Thyme (I hope to make some yummy thyme honey with it... other than that I have no idea what to do with it)

I got me herbs at the wonderful Hy-Vee Garden Center! Yes they have such a wonderful staff to help you and Rochel is awesome, she helped me plan all 6 of my planter, and told me to only fill up the planter with about 6 inches of "good" dirt and the rest can be with rocks, sand, and multch wich costs like a 10th of the price then "good"dirt! (of course dirt's on top of the rocks and stuff) Looking at those pictures it looks like I know what I am doing (I have no idea what I am doing, yep first time) Thanks Hy-Vee and Rochell!





We also have 6 lilac trees in our back yard, so of course I had to take some pictures of those! arn't they beautiful?



So now I am loving the idea of getting amazing Lilacs and watering my little baby herb garden. and it's amazing how fast everything starts growing my planters already look like they have been there for a month! I love it.