Adventures of Mint

If I were to assign personalities to my plants, most of them would be accepting, contented, decorous, forgiving, homebody-type souls. Plants by their very nature find their little plot of dirt and stay there, doing their own thing in as much as wind and sun and rain and stupid people allow. In fact, one almost gets the feeling of smugness from plants, because regardless of any pleading, begging, bribing, or opportuning on the part the gardener, plants are going to do things their way. It normally takes shears and twine to dictate otherwise. Needless to say, one would not normally claim a spirit of adventure for one's plants. Plants are stationary.

However, just about every family has its sheep of other colors, and I have discovered that plants are no exception. Amongst my little brood, it is the mint.

I adopted the mint at the same time I adopted my parsley and cilantro, and with some trepidation I put all three tiny plants in the same planter. The trepidation comes because I'd heard of mint being somewhat invasive. But the three were tiny and I didn't have another pot and herbs earn the right to be herbs by being just about indestructible, so it was possible they could coexist.

But the mint rapidly got ideas and by the time I was starting to see some disturbingly runner-like shoots heading towards the mint's boxmates, I decided something needed to be done. The mint got confined to its only little pot and got the freedom to do what it pleased there.

The parsley seems to have gotten its own delusions of conquest from the mint, but parsley doesn't send out runners. Crossing borders is therefore more difficult.



This state of affairs persisted for several weeks until one evening I came back from something or other rather late, in the rain. I hurried to bring in my plants and close the shutters against the wet, only to blink stupidly (it was late) at the gap in planter boxes on my window sill. After a moment of census-taking, I concluded the mint was gone from the ledge. It was also not anywhere to be seen on my balcony. Clearly, the mint had been cast off the other side.

The other side of my fifth floor balcony.

In case you didn't know, Europeans count the ground floor as zero, not one like Americans. So interpret that as sixth floor.

For about thirty seconds, I freaked out in terror at the horrors visited upon my mint plant when some pigeon or something had cruelly cast it off the balcony into the abyss below. Then logic penetrated. It wasn't an abyss below, it was a bed of ground cover plants. Herbs earn the right to be herbs by being well nigh indestructible, and it isn't like the plant is going to dry out and die overnight with it raining. Nor would I have been able to hunt it out of the bed of plants in the middle of the night, in the rain. So the mint was going to have to sit tight until morning.

So the next morning I woke up early so as to minimize the number of people who'd see me routing through the bushes outside apartments windows early in the morning, and headed downstairs. I jumped in amongst the vine-like plants and started hunting for my pot, getting thoroughly soaked socks in the process. After a few minutes, I spied a circular shape beneath the leaves and fished my pot back out, having landed right side up against my building.

This coupled with the dearth of pigeons seen perching on my balcony (plus the unmolested state of my strawberries) made me begin to doubt a bird was to blame. But I brought my mint back up to its spot in the line-up, and told it that it would have to live without its water tray until I could purchase a new one, since that wasn't to be found.
That would and should have been the end of it. But the spirit of adventure once roused will not be quenched. About a week later, I once again found myself staring at a gap in my line-up of plants, and this time I wasn't accepting no pigeon story.

Mint had to wait a day and half for me to fish it back out, because it was once again raining. Have I mentioned I hate the feeling of wet socks? Finding it was quicker, because the plant was once again right side up against the wall of my building.

Truly the spirit of adventure may be unconquerable, but I don't consider routing through bushes an adventure I want to have regularly. So the mint has been grounded . . . er, made to sit in the corner, and it has stayed there like a good plant.

Or maybe it just has a crush on the petunia.