Hope Springs Eternal

For years i have read about the fabulous flavor of lemon verbena but had never seen even a sprig in person. You can understand why I jumped for joy when I discovered an entire verbena bush at the farmer's market last summer. I snapped it up but didn't manage to carve time out of my schedule to use it except for crushing a random leaf between my wrists for natural perfume. The verbena lady had warned me that my bush needed to come in for the winter and that it would lose most of it's leaves by Thanksgiving. It did lose all the big leaves but until about January it had numerous small green leaves. Even though I managed to kill many vintage houseplants (some I bought as babies at a Brooklyn supermarket in 2000) this winter, I had hopes for the verbena. Then, toward the end of January, it became all brown. I refused to give up though. I left it in my living room and continued to water it. Today I decided the weather was nice enough to move it outside and when I picked it up, I noticed a new green sprout toward the bottom. Yeeeeehawwww! I promise not to take my verbena (quick tangent-am I wrong for wanting a daughter named Verbena and a son named Basil?) for granted this year. So far, nothing has made me feel quite as springy as moving this dead looking tree out of my living room!