Last year I went on an herb kick and bought several packets of seeds. Baby dill, sweet basil, parsley, garlic chives, and cilantro. I bought two large plastic trays which were meant to be litter boxes and set them on the back patio. I filled them with expensive dirt, since Arizona has terrible soil. Deserts are like that. Anyway, I created tiny rows and sowed the seeds meticulously. I watered them daily, and watched their progress. I could see the tiny needle sprouts of the dill, and the round beginnings of the basil. The seedlings grew... and then they stopped. They all died, completely. I was terribly irritated, and I dumped the two catboxes full of dirt into a couple of depressions next to a palm tree in my backyard. At least the expensive dirt was good at filling in the holes.

Yesterday, I was walking around the back of my house when a plant caught my eye. Right next to the palm tree were a little cluster of baby dill plants. Perfect little plants, no yellow or brown spots, nothing wrong with them at all. I looked to the other former depressions to see if anything had grown there, and I found where we empty our beer bottles for the recycling bin a clump of Italian parsley. The catbox dill thrived. It just didn't like the catbox.