It’s springtime, and that means I look at my yard with an especially keen eye. Toward eating, of course.
Of course, the herbs—which I inter-plant with the other bedding plants because they’re all pretty together—are an obvious place to start. The parsley, coming into its own in its first full season, leads the way. And that goes with practically any food. If you eat green things, which I do.
Sometimes, of course, I just let green things do their own thing, because that can lead to *other* green things when they go to seed and have babies. Nice of them to keep on feeding me, all the while looking interesting in new and different ways as the seasons go. Kale: great texture and color as a leafy plant, great food as a picked or cut bunch of leaves, great branching, spiky verticality as a flowering and pod-producing biennial.
The rosemary out by the road is thriving and makes not only a lovely shrub but great perfume, too, when I walk by and can’t resist drawing my hand through it in passing. And there’s *plenty* for flavoring and garnishing everything I like.
Mint. Of *course* the place where money is produced should be named after this valuable herb. One of the best, most deliciously versatile green things around. Grows like a literal weed back in the northwest, where I grew up, but it’s a little harder to get going here in my Texas garden, so I’m thrilled this little colony is getting itself established under the backyard pear tree. Hurray for refreshing mint!
Many of the plants I’m nursing along in my nursery won’t pay off for a while. Some, maybe not until I’m not living here anymore. A baby grapevine is happily starting its way twining up the pruned-back holly I use as a support for the hummingbirds’ trumpet vine, too. Hope they’ll play well together as co-attractants for honeybees, lovely leafy, blooming, and fruiting plants when they grow up a bit more.
This little figgy went to market…as a feeble looking $4 stick in a pot on the discount rack. That was a couple of years ago, and the little fella has had a couple of rough years since being rescued. But it’s determined to live. See? Once again, leafing out from its tiny, twiggy stem. *Someday* it’ll bear fruit, I very much hope. But for now, it’s symbol of determination and a little spot of green, and that’s good enough to eat.
Even the front corner, out by the road, is a good place to put some high-contrast, shapely stuff that’ll be edible extroverted one day as well. Salvias, fringe flowers, irises and…rhubarb? Why not!
And of course there’s a rhubarb doppelgänger that is beautiful in the garden any old time, too, and is about as versatile as they come, a milder-flavored version, I suppose of the parsley and kale back in the first photos. Salad, cooked greens, garnish: chard. Silverbeet. Oh, yeah, and snazzy looking in the flowerbeds, too.
Food for me, yes, but gardening is also for the birds. No, literally. Sunflowers getting ready to bud for flowering joins sorghum grass that will seed for the avians in the late summer and fall. And below, those decorative squashes and pumpkins I piled up in the fall are not only leafing out profusely but bursting into flower to set up more fruits. The squashes and pumpkins will be nice, I’m sure, but I’ll probably indulge in eating some of the yummy blossoms as well.
And while we’re on the subject of edible blooms, there *are* some that are delicious (Hemerocallis/daylilies, which taste to me a bit like snow peas) might escape my jaws unless they bloom really prolifically. But of course, I do think they’re tasty…so perhaps…. Time for a sunny floral salad again?
Art-Colored Glasses 