My potted mint does okay but doesn't thrive out of control like all the reports I read. It's enough for my daily tea and occasional mint simple syrup infusions for julep, though, so that's fine.

This year I planted 8 basil plants. Two in pots to try to keep alive over winter and 6 in the ground that will be for pesto making for the freezer. Can't have too much pesto. It will be a wild basil forest in that bed in the next couple of weeks. Going to do my first harvest tomorrow to encourage bigger growth.

I like a nice dry cider sometimes when I'm not in the mood for beer, but was really misled by the "ale" and was hoping for something like the Abita Strawberry Lager - an obvious actual beer with a bit of refreshing complimentary fruit flavor. I'm sure there is such an apple infused beer out there, but this ain't it.

I'm sure there is such an apple infused beer out there, but this ain't it.

Shock Top makes a Honeycrisp Apple Wheat ale. I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard good things about them.

Unfortunately, I quite dislike most wheat beers, and Shock Top's Belgian white (which I imagine is probably the backbone of that beer) is one of my least favorite. I know that the the hefeweizen flavor profile probably mixes best with apple, but my palate craves a lager or even APA backbone instead. I actually think a decent hops profile would mesh well with a crisp apple bite.

Maybe I'll try infusing some of my own, using SeriousEats's french press method, a decent pale ale, and some pink lady apples.

I do want to say that when Redd's is correctly compared with its real competitors - Mike's, Smirnoff Ice, etc - it's actually really good. At a college sophomore party, given a choice of Mike's, Smirnoff, Redd's, and Natty Lite, I would definitely choose the Redd's. But it's also significantly more expensive than most of those, so I'm not sure it will take off the way they hope with the true target demographic.

Ah, I hear the dulcet tones of neighbor's foster kids, the little screamers. Neighbors, in the course of informing me of our landlady's intent to sell, assured me that all information they passed to the kids was totally harmless, and that it was the kids own fault that they extrapolated what they did. Which, if I didn't despise my adult neighbors more than the wee ones, I'd believe.

I got some pineapple mint for a container a couple of weekd ago and it's already dead. I don't know if it was over watered, under watered or what.

Sometimes plants just die, whatever you do.

I have a very Darwinian approach to gardening.

That said, i I have a pot of spearmint, peppermint, and chocolate mint on the patio that got hit hard by a heat wave last summer - as did all my plants, really, but I expected the mint to be one of the ones to bounce back because, hey, it's mint. I just keep watering it in hopes that there will be more growth someday.

Eta: I've never had good luck with basil. It dies or it bolts, either way I don't enough edible leaves to make pesto.

Pineapple mint? I've never even heard of that.

I want to try some succulents. There's one I desperately want called String of Pearls, but I don't know how ambitious it would be to try it.

Is "no!" the only word that cats bothered getting good at saying? This [link] one seems to know just when to say it, but her owner is having none of it.

How do you mean, ambitious, Amy? I don't know that plant, do they get huge and try to eat you?

100 squats, woohoo! I don't think I can do this and start running again this month, my legs cannot take it.

Oh, that is one unhappy cat. And yet, if that were Switch, he'd be biting and clawing to get away.