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Rosemary

Hey, great find!  Your rosemary is probably a prostrate variety, one that
will cascade over the pot's sides.  I've seen it in landscaping in Las Vegas,
cascading over the sides of big planters, but, as I live in Zone 5, I'll
never try that in my own landscaping.  As you say, it's a plant to overwinter
indoors.

Okay, the book Carrots Love Tomatoes (Louise Riotte, Garden Way Publishers)
says that carrots and beans like rosemary, as well as all of the Brassica
family (broccoli, cabbage, etc).  Rosemary also likes to be near sage.

As far as overwintering your rosemary, it takes a bit of care.  In my
apartment days, I tried (and killed) several rosemaries.  I summered them on
my full-sun balcony, then brought them in for the winter.  Fortunately, my
only two windows faced south; unfortunately, the next building blocked direct
sun for most of the day.  The plants went from full spectrum full sun to a
rather dim window-sill.  Within a few months, no matter what I did, the
plants were dead.  Then I moved to my current house, with a beautiful
bumped-out greenhouse window in full sun for the whole winter.  Suddenly I
could reliably overwinter rosemaries, no sweat!  Then there's my mother's
experience.  I gave her a rooted cutting from my then-3-year-old plant, which
she cared for in her somewhat dim house-plant garden.  It lived on a shaded
porch during the summer, and then moved back into the dim house-plant area
for the winter.  Her spindly limp green plant bore absolutely no
resemblance to my nice, tree-like plant, although they both tasted the same.
Last summer, however, Mom decided to be "good" to her rosemary, and put it
out in full sun with her tomatoes (to get it to the drip watering system).
It suffered some shock early in the season, but soon grew robust and
tree-like.  Then, Mom took it back indoors to the dim house-plant garden.
The rosemary croaked.

Shortly after this experience, I attended a virtual herb workshop on
CompuServe, and learned that the dead rosemaries all suffered the same fate.
They were subjected to enormous changes in ambient light levels, and didn't
have enough reserves to grow large low-light leaves to take advantage of
low-light levels, and their much-smaller bright-light-level leaves just
couldn't sustain them.  The moral of the story is, if you have to overwinter
your rosemary in less than full sun, keep it in less than full sun for the
summer, as well.  If your indoors site is really dim, keep the rosemary in
deep shade during the summer.  These sturdy plants are a lot more
light-sensitive than we expect.

Oh, yeah, don't overwater them.  I lost my then-5-year-old "mother" plant
(the one I took all my rootings from) this past winter from too much care.
The roots rotted.

Anyway, in spite of all of my warnings, enjoy your baby!  I love rosemary and
currently grow six varieties (two prostrate, four upright, flowers in
various shades of blue).  And I'm looking for pink-flowering and
white-flowering varieties, as well--prostrate *or* upright.  And enough money
to have the window over my kitchen sink replaced with a second greenhouse
window! ;-)

BTW, rosemary makes a good houseplant bonsai, if you have the patience.  (I
let my last one dry out, darn.)  And also nice live Christmas trees (upright
varieties only).

Catherine (Zone 5, alpine desert) (definitely not native rosemary climate)

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