My baby Dill and Basil have been growing stubbornly and turning into teenagers with an attitude almost over night. Each day they stretch their limbs higher to the sun and grow in strength like sumo wrestlers in training.

The Marjoram, on the other hand, is as pathetic as it’s been. I may need to reach out to You Grow Girl for a professional advice on how to grow herbs in urban conditions. Or maybe, just maybe, the fact that my Marjoram is so dormant is directly related to the fact that I keep my “garden” on our building’s breaker box cabinet?

I can’t be blamed for being creative. Stop throwing mud balls at me! What else was I supposed to do, knowing all well that these guys live off of the sun and water for the most part, aside from loving to hang out in a pool of nutritious and funky moist dirt?

We live in a jungle, an urban jungle, and I mean it quite literally. Our building is planted in the middle of a tropical garden with hummingbirds gossiping all mornings, nutty squirrels fighting over nuts, and monkeys hanging out on the palm trees’ branches. We have coyotes, polar bears and sharks in there, too! You have no idea how much work Cosmo puts into keeping the madness under control. He may not look that, but he’s a lion at heart.

One thing we’re lacking the most is the sun. It just can’t break through the network of greenery above our heads. These are not the conditions to raise my herbs in. Hence, the breaker box on the southern wall by our garage, which is exposed to the sun for the better part of the day.

Gayla Trail, I need you, girl.