Tripping With Basil

Posted by Barbara M. Martin Jan 27, 2007

My little basil seedlings recently accompanied me on a family weekend trip to San Francisco. They had to travel along with us because they are still little baby seedlings needing daily watering, and being basils they need ample light and warm temperatures. We turn the heat off when we leave home, so they had to come along.

The basil seedlings love love loved being in the car. They sat proudly on the dashboard and basked in the strong sunlight all day long. Since we were heading northward, we had to move them from side to side as the sun moved across the sky, but they really perked up and enjoyed their sun soaked day.

When we reached San Francisco, our hotel room window faced north and seemed a little dim for sun loving basil. So in a fit of improvisational frenzy I decided to place the basils under the table lamp for supplemental light. The basils needed to be close to the bulb so I carefully stacked up my suitcase topped with an assortment of books and placed the basil on top of the precariously balanced pile -- the little seed tray sat just and inch or two below the circular fluorescent bulb and basked in the intense light reflected and bounced all about by the pale lampshade. It was toasty warm in there, too. Basil heaven, if there is such a thing outside of, well, Italy.

Anyhoo. When we went out for the day, I left a little warning note by the lamp switch asking the maid to leave the lamp on for the little flowers, but the efficient and fast moving maid did not see the note. Nor did she realize there was a little container of seedlings hidden up inside the lampshade. I guess most hotel guests don't set up booby traps like that, with or without a note? Somehow, in the course of tidying things up, the little plants apparently got um for lack of a better word, flipped. She very gently and carefully replanted the seedlings in what was left of the soil mix, switched off the lamp (the hotel was very energy saving oriented hence the nifty fluorescent bulb et al) and left them in the dark until we returned to our room late that evening. Oh well.

When I found them, the basils seemed a little bedraggled and quite a few were missing. I tucked them in with a little drink of bottled water for TLC and hoped for the best. Next morning, they looked pretty chipper all things considered so we loaded them back into the car. (My Scion xB the Box Car Milk Truck Wannabe or whatever you want to call it has GREAT windows, by the way.) This was an unusually sunny weekend in San Francisco. On the way through town we visited the Golden Gate Bridge (yes we could SEE the bridge!) and also hit the beach around noon for a picnic.

I set the container of little basil plants on the stone wall separating the parking area from the sandy strip of beach so I could take a souvenir touristy tpe photo of the basils with the waves as a back drop. Immediately a ginormous seagull plopped down right next to the little plastic wrapped berry box and was all set to take a peck at it. I guess seagulls sure do know from deli containers. I yelled and the seagull left in a huff but landed nearby and surveyed the situation from about ten feet away. My basil seedlings are not seagull bait, thank you very much! By then my husband was laughing hysterically. (He is not really a gardener.)

Now safely returned home and resting comfortably under my bedside lamp supplemented by a window with western exposure, the seedlings await potting up to individual containers.