All of my houseplants are potted in soil from my yard. Not recommended procedure, I know, but it seems to work just fine.

A couple of months ago I noticed one of the plants in my bedroom window had a little green friend growing next to it. Being of the pacifist persuasion, I let it be.

Recently I moved the leaves aside to give the plants a drink and I noticed a distinctive smell. A sniff of the fingers confirmed it - definitely a tomato plant.

The earth wants to feed us. We just have to step back and let it.

I think maybe Jon needs to start a blog. He has a lot of opinions about how often I should post, and what I should post about. He's really very bossy.

Today he would like to see a picture of the onions and garlic I harvested the other day.


He can walk into the craft room and look at them himself. He can pick them up, smell them, peel them, cut them, and eat them. But I guess it's not real until there's been a picture on my blog.

The vinegar is ready.


Just in time.

I had the best surprise today! I went to check on the new strawberries Dagny and I planted this year. They look great, but more exciting was what I found on the tri-stars we planted in Spring 2010.



These are the same plants that produced til November last year. If this year's similar, we'll enjoy five full months of strawberries! What could be better than that?



Ok, ya, maybe that.

That honey is SO GOOD. It's making me even more excited to taste some of the other things from our yard. So far this year we've harvested maple syrup, honey, and chives.


We have quite a lot to look forward to. Soon there will be strawberries from the hundreds of crowns Dagny and I planted this Spring and last.



Loads of garlic, of course.


And blueberries, assuming the critters will share. My plan of attack was to plant so many bushes there's no way the humans, birds, and animals competing for the berries could ever eat them all. Time will tell whether I should have bettered my odds with a BB gun, as Jon suggests.

(Do you see the ant?)

Peaches, pears, plums, apples, almonds, kiwi, asparagus, rhubarb, onions, kale, lettuce, basil, thyme, rosemary, lavender, watermelon, eggplant, summer squash, zucchini, scallions, tomatoes, jalapenos - all growing in exchange for some dirty, heavy, grateful-making work.

The garlic I planted last fall is growing beautifully.


Not too long now til we'll be snipping snapes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Also growing beautifully are the ajuga. These grew in my parents' back yard, and when they moved a few were transplanted here. For me, a yard is not a yard without their springtime splash of purple.


Speaking of splashes - oceans, really - of purple, the violets continue to expand their territory.


This bee seemed to be taking as much enjoyment from them as I was. With each landing, her weight pulled the flower head down to the ground. Then she'd catapult off to the next blossom. I imagined her calling, "Wheeee!"

Today I got a pot of beans started on the stove and reached into the drawer for a head of garlic. What did I find? Four heads. Just four heads of garlic left from my first garlic harvest. I knew the supply was dwindling, but I had on some level allowed myself to imagine a little magic going on in my kitchen - a drawer that never emptied, home-grown garlic always at hand.



Luckily there's another kind of magic happening out in my yard. Ordered in September, planted in October:

8 oz German Red Garlic
1 lb Music Garlic
8 oz Premium Northern White Garlic
8 oz Purple Glazer Garlic

Although it's double what I planted last year, and enough to keep the vampires away for sure, I'm making a mental note on this snowy January day that there'd be no harm in planting a little extra this fall.

Ten years ago, when we moved into a neighborhood of farmers, I didn't know when strawberry season was. My food all came from the grocery store, where regardless of cardboard cut-out holiday decorations, seasons don't exist. I had dreamed of growing things, imagined gardens and fruit trees, but I knew so little and was so disconnected from how food grows that I didn't have any idea what I didn't know.

For me, this has been the year of the garden. I've spent hours preparing soil and planting things, but many more hours reading. I'm learning and learning and most days feel I can't learn fast enough to suit myself. I pick up a tip here and a tidbit there, and realize that even some of the things I thought I had figured out - you pick strawberries in June, with the new summer sun on your back - aren't quite so simple.



For weeks now I have gone outside with my colander, expecting this to be the day it comes back empty. It hasn't happened yet. I go out in a sweater and a jacket and pluck strawberries with cold fingers. Bright red berries poke out from under fallen leaves, and I feel exhilaratingly off balance.

I can't wait to find out what else I don't know.

Just for Anna, here's some of what's going on at our house:

The beehive got taller.



There are lots of bees in there, and the smell of beeswax is amazing.



The hydrangea are putting on quite a show.



I'm growing summer squash and zucchini for the first time.


The craft room smells like garlic.



Critters are eating all our strawberries.



And if this is what your 'weeds' look like, don't pull them - they're tall phlox.

This peach tree was old when we moved to our house 9 years ago. Every year we're pleasantly surprised to see it load up with peaches.



After we bought the house, but before we'd come to know every nook and cranny, I said the only thing I'd add would be fruit trees. Winter ended, blooms started appearing, and suddenly I could see we had a pear, a peach, a crab apple, and two cherry trees. None were in the greatest shape. They hadn't been tended and had all lived long lives already. But, man, the peaches from that tree are unbelievable. Not grocery store pretty, sometimes munched on by worms, but so good. My favorite thing to do is to get the one from the very top of the tree, the one that feels hot to my hand. When I eat that peach, I taste sunshine.

It's because of this tree that I learned to can. One peach tree grows a LOT of peaches. In the next couple of weeks we'll be picking and I'll be listening for jars to pop. Oh, and making peach upside down cakes, some to eat and some to freeze. There's nothing like eating sunshine when it's cold outside.

We've added quite a few trees in the past nine years - peaches, apples, mulberries, pears, plums, and almonds - gotten our blueberry patch established, and next year we'll be adding strawberries. But I doubt anything will ever taste better than the first peach I ate off this old tree.

Ok, I've got another one for you. Can anyone tell me what this is?



It's not a bush, more like a small gangling tree, and we have tons of them.

I've been identifying some weeds that are growing in the spot where we throw our tree trimmings/pulled weeds/etc. Since cleaning up long-neglected sections of our property is a never-ending project around here, it's quite a big pile. An unbelievable variety of things grows around and over it each year. We like the wild blackberries best, but so do the birds and the bunnies and the chipmunks and the squirrels and whoever else is living over there.

Teasel (Dipsacus fullonum), with its egg shape, spikes, and purple flowers, was easy to find with google. I'm having a harder time with this one, which I don't remember seeing in previous years.


Can anyone tell me what it is?

A view from the porch swing.

Things are happening.

This would be a very cool way to pretty up the concrete in our pool area....

(Don't worry, Jon, I'm all projected out. For now, anyway.)

There's color popping up everywhere, which for me is on the same level of importance as my ever-present big old glass of ice water. Just what I need to keep me happily alive. I'm drinking it in.





(Did you see the tiny little bug on the yellow flower?)

The Wisteria is just starting to wake up.



And so are these berries. Anyone besides my mom and sister know what these are?


For me, they're childhood in tree form.