Anybody want some Allium seed?

These things have produced a MASSIVE amount of seeds.

From what I have read it seems that they make take a couple of years to flower when planted from seed (as opposed to bulb) but hey, seeds are fun, and free.

Dandelion Pie

So this ginormous dandelion was kind of annoying me. I kept meaning to pull it, and then forgetting, and then noticing it again... until it became a giant monster.

Today I just couldn't take it anymore.

So I yanked it.

And I blanched it.

Added some fresh mint, oregano, cheeses, onion and egg...

And I ate it.

Sooooooooooo CUTE!

The baby gourd, that is to say... not to be confused with my fingernail or the rusty pickup truck key.

Weird marketing?

Do you think it's okay that I put a squash-flower pic on the MLS???





I just really liked it, is all....










And while I have the blossom, the future owner of this cottage gets: THE SQUASH!

Exciting, dontcha think?

I thought so too. :-)

(Listing link coming soon to a blog near you.)

The blossom that ate Minneapolis

This is a Datura blossom. I got this plant for free from a lady in Camden, thanks to Craigslist.


I've never EVER seen a flowerbud this long.










I present: my house key, for scale.










Or better yet, my finger.






Note: I took these pics a couple of days ago, and the thing has grown at least two inches since then.

I can't wait to see it open!!!!

Green Stuff

Stuff is a-growin'!

Boulevards, Black Beauty, and Breakin' da Law!

This is the backside of a vacant duplex next door to my house. It's bank-owned, and has been empty for at least as long as I've had my place.

Anybody wanna buy it???













Look at the size of this yard! I could fit my whole house in there, easily.

Such a shame to see it go to waste, right? Especially since it gets loaaaaaaads of sunlight.












Neighbor yard on the left, my yard on the right.

Seriously, it's just too tempting for me... like chocolate brownies sitting on the counter next to a tall glass of full-fat milk.

What's a girl to do???












Guerrilla gardennnnnnnnning!!!!

That's what.

Here we have a rogue mini-pumpkin and ornamental gourd planting, just on the other side of the gate to my yard. (I'm hoping they'll creep around the corner and tangle with my Liatris, giving the gate a wildish look. We'll see.)













And here we have illegal pumpkin patch #2. This one consisted of three packs of dollar store pumkin seeds mixed with two packs of dollar store acorn squash. Not the best seed in the world, but that's what makes it ideal for guerrilla gardening, right?

I'm not risking my $3/pack seeds on this side of the fence, dammit.

BTW, the last time I planted dollar store pumpkin seeds they miraculously grew into hubbard squash. Oh well, I still ate it.










Back on the legal side of the fence, we have eggplant flowering all over the place. I think this guy is Black Beauty, but I had some labeling issues back in February when I started the seeds, so it could just as easily be Ping Tung or who knows what else. I give up.












And look at the pretty tulips! These were planted by some unknown predecessor of mine, and I'm very grateful to the neighborhood squirrels for not eating them.

Er, yet.











And here's the boulevard garden. It's a bit sparse yet, but I'm trying to hold back on jamming things in, since I've created plant-havoc by doing that in the past. (Must remember: things get BIGGER as they grow.)

I will mulch as soon as my Liatris are a couple inches out of the dirt. (They're just beginning to poke out now.)






In the next installment of my illegal gardening posts, I will show what I did to the neighbor's front yard. (Can't yet, because nothing has come up!)

The Backyard

So I posted about all the yardwork and gardening I've been doing but I didn't add any pics. Fellow houseblogger Litter Box House totally called me out on it!

I was actually thinking that I should add some when I made that post, but as usual, I wanted to wait until everything was totally perfect before posting photos, lest someone think "hrm, that doesn't really look so great, how many hours did you work on that again???"

Or maybe that's just my inner critic!

Anyway, if I wait until things are perfect, I'll be dead before anybody sees anything, so screw it.




Here is a little flower bed I made out of "re-crete" gathered from the crumbled edges of the pad from a former garage. (Now reincarnated as a patio, since I don't feel like jackhammering it up.)

The flowers are white columbine which I planted from seeds gathered from my mother's garden several years ago. I'll plant some other stuff in there too, but I still don't know what.






These are my raised beds. The small one in the background is a nursery bed, where I've planted other flower seeds for future transplantation, as well as a few rows of gathered seeds of unidentifiable genus. (I forgot to label them when I gathered them. Oops!)

In the foreground bed I have cold crops such as lettuce, mesclun, radish, turnips, kohlrabi, and various herbs.

I need to build AT LEAST two more such beds, since I have a dozen eggplant seedlings at home which are beginning to flower already, plus roughly two dozen brandywine tomato seedlings which are bursting their peat-cups.










This is the weird mound to which I referred in my previous post. It's kind of hard to see how high it is in this photo, but suffice it to say that when I stand on it I can see OVER THE FENCE.
Bizarro. I suppose it could be the result of some earth moving which came from the demolition of the garage... Who knows? At any rate, I intend to dig it down and spread the dirt around in an attempt to reduce the rollercoaster-like unevenness that characterizes my yard.

After that fun task, I'll probably just seed the lawn and be done with it. (My ideal yard would be landscaped with no grass at all, but one must be practical when one is operating on a deadline!)

I didn't take any pics of the boulevard garden yet, since there's not much growing there at the moment. (Stuff is still under the dirt!) As soon as things begin to come up and I get it mulched, however, it will be properly immortalized on this blog. (Being sure, of course, to avoid shots of the front yard proper, which is a disaster right now!)