Delicious, Fragrant, Lemon Verbena

The lemon verbena has had a very good year. The tiny little plant that I looked so hard for in the spring is now a small bush. It has even flowered. Many places you will find lemon verbena labeled an annual. It's actually a tender perennial that is better at attracting white flies than any yellow sticky strip you ever saw. Nevertheless it is time to cut it back and dig it up to bring in the house. The lure of fresh lemon verbena on fruit salad or for tea is too strong to give up easily. As long as it looks good it will stay upstairs. Some years it makes it there . Some years it gets banished to the basement. There it does its dead stick imitation until spring. Sometimes the dead stick sprouts new leaves. Sometimes the dead stick is DEAD, ends up in the compost, and I search the nurseries for new lemon verbenas in the spring. No matter which way it goes this delicious tasting, fantastic smelling, herb is well worth the effort!