a pile of pits

Over the past year, occasionally I would save the seeds and pits from fruit that I ate....cherries, apricots, peaches etc. In April, I dumped all of the pits into a 1x1 square foot plot in the backyard just to see what would happen.

In early May, they started to sprout.

Now the mystery fruit has grown quite a bit. At first I thought they were cherry trees based on the size of the sprout, but now they are looking more like melon...who knows?

more cucumbers

Going out of town so I thought I'd check under the big cucumber leaves to see if there were any cucumbers hiding below. Found these four, the biggest yet!

harvesting dinosaur kale

We planted dinosaur kale in mid-May. It's my favorite kind of kale...those bumpy, dark green leaves:


I have begun harvesting the biggest leaves. This gives the smaller leaves more room and sunlight.


I chop them up and cook them down with olive oil, red onion, garlic, salt and pepper. They really cook down a lot so you need a lot of kale to make a dish. Healthy and delicious, although I think I put in a bit too much salt this time...

rainbow over the garden

I went outside today and looked up to see this incredible rainbow in the sky over our backyard:

spiky cucumber harvest

Disappointed by the cucumber experiment in the greenhouse, I picked up some organic cucumber starts at the local drug store. I bought 4 plants, each about 5 inches tall. I planted them in the raised bed in the beginning of May. Here they are to the right of the massive oregano plant:


Since then they have flourished, growing up and out of the bed. They have yellow flowers that turn into mini cucumbers that grow to a size of about 8 inches. The stems of the cucumber plant are very spiky, I assume it's an adaptation for protection. But the cucumbers themselves are also spiky. Need to remove the spikes before the cucumber is ready to eat.

pierre the cat

A frequent visitor to our backyard, we're growing more fond of Pierre the cat. And I think he's taking a liking to us as well. He'll approach looking for a nice scratch behind the ears. Not sure who his owner is....in my mind I keep telling myself that he's not the cat who used the raised bed as a litter box. And yet, he may be...but he's still so cute.