My Fall Favorites! My Best Fall Posts

It's Fall! It's finally here!

I first noticed Fall one day last week when I saw a small yellow leaf on the floor of the dining room. Since then, I've been checking for more signs every day. Sure enough, the very next day, there was a sprinkling of leaves when the wind kicked up while we were playing in the backyard with our friends. Three days ago I saw the first spots of red on the slope of trees opposite my house. And today - officially, is Fall!

To celebrate, I have compiled all of my favorite Fall Posts from the last two years. My favorite Fall recipes, crafts and activities.




Fall Recipes:
Whole Wheat Cheese Raviolis with Apricot Squash Sauce
Apricot Squash Soup with Grilled Provolone Sandwiches
Vegetarian Chili With Meat Alternative
Nonfat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Nonfat Crab and Squash Chowder


Fall Festivities:
A Yard For Harvest
Seed Saving How and Why

Fall Crafts:
Harvest Wreath
Sweater Legs
Cable and Ribbed Glove Pattern
Table Centerpieces From Found Natural Materials
Embroidered Heirloom Pillows

Harvest Wreath

Fall is absolutely my favorite time of year. The outdoor temperatures become more comfortable, the insects diminish, and the colors of the landscape here in Missouri are exquisite as the fog rolling in on a cool autumn morning.

I feel peaceful and relaxed at the idea of hunkering down for the winter. Harvest season is less than a month away!

As I shared in this post last year, one of my favorite fall activities is seed collecting. Visiting parks, the woods, even walking around my neighborhood usually culminates in a rather large collection of seeds to stash away.


As I wrote in this post, another of my of my favorite things to do in the fall is to harvest my yard. Not only the edible parts, but the grasses and twigs for my fireplace, weeds and wild flowers to make centerpieces and arrangements, and my unruly, out of control wild grape vines to make wreathes and other decorations.

This prolific vine gets cut back every fall and regrows in the spring. I think it's rather pretty, even though it's a messy thing. It's worth it to me to keep it because I can make pretty wreathes out of it.

This year, I have not been enjoying the outdoors quite so much. I decided to make a new wreath, but rather than collect my decorations before hand, I have decided to hang the wreath bare with only a simple cotton print and denim bow.

This autumn, as the landscape changes, we will look for our decorations for it and collect them on our walks while we are gathering our seeds. Anytime we see something pretty or interesting, we will collect it and bring it home. I am hoping this will motivate me to get out more and enjoy the lovely temperate weather. I'll update pictures of it on my facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/TheyAreAllOfMe, as it begins to fill up!

Growing A Yard For Harvest

I love to have a manicured yard. I want my yard to look good so that when I come home, I am arriving at a beautiful and uplifting place.

Growing native flowers is one way to achieve this with minimal fuss and no watering or chemicals. It's also important that I find my plants for free, and amassing my collection of native plants is something that I am always working towards. With many of my local parks growing native flowers, and no shortage of interesting flowers growing along the roadside, collecting seeds for my yard is both simple and exciting!

One thing that is just as important to me as having a nice looking yard is to have a yard that is useful. Again, growing native flowers is a useful way to garden because it benefits the local eco system and attracts beneficial insects and feeds the birds, squirrels and wild life. But native flowers are not only nice to look at and good for the environment, they make nice dried arrangements in the fall and can be used in many ways. Some wild flowers are edible like Queen Annes Lace (wild carrot) or have medicinal uses, like Echinacea.





I grow flowers with the ultimate goal of harvest. Even my ornamental rose bushes have a purpose aside from being pretty. I can make potpourri out of the blooms after they just reach their peak, and then I can blend them up to make rose beads for jewelry making.

Growing a yard for harvest naturally means growing a yard that is abundant in food. I would love some day to have a yard in which I can walk out into and pick a wide variety food to eat. I have my vegetable patch, my herb garden and my strawberry bed. I also have a hazelnut tree that I will find a mate for soon so that in a few years I will have loads of hazelnuts to snack on and cook with.

Nature offered me a blackberry bush earlier this year, that just sprouted in my yard and 75% of my vegetable garden volunteered itself, from the compost that I created from my kitchen scraps. I planted the cucumber and the bed of lettuce, but Nature decided to give me 3 squash plants, 2 pumpkin vines, 7 garlic plants and over twenty tomato plants. Yes, Nature is very, very good to me and I know how to use my bit of Earth.

One day I plan to have a small orchard, of four to six fruit trees, and I have a large currently unused area designated to grow others types of berries, apart from the blackberries I already have. But it's important to me to have a yard that is useful in many ways - not just pleasing to look at or delicious to eat, even more than a space for the children to play.

There are plants in my yard which are only grown for some sort of functional purpose.


I have an ash tree that was cut down to the stump a year ago because it was badly placed and would soon grow into the chain link fence. The sugars built up in the roots allowed it to sprout several upright branches, turning the tree into a bush. I noticed this when the shoots were small and could be snipped easily, but I quickly realized the potential in them. I allowed to shoots to grow tall, for they are straight and pliable. We have used them to roast marshmallows and hotdogs over the fire pit, and they are also useful for building natural trellises for vining plants. Cutting them down every fall will allow new shoots each spring to be used for many things throughout the next growing season. Because they are very bendy, they can be easily shaped and I am currently considering what types of things might be created from them.

I have a slope in my back yard that is a great place to allow the grass to grow in the late fall and get nice and tall. We purposely stop mowing it in early September. There are some weeds that grow in it, that once dried make nice floral arrangement along with the native wild flowers, but what I'm really after is the grass. In the late afternoon when there is no moisture on it, I will reap the grass and form it into little bundles. These are for my fire place during the winter. We also trim the trees back when the summer begins to get hot and the rapid growth of spring dies down. The limbs will then be cut into 8 inch long sections and dried out for fall, to become kindling. In the winter when I want to start my fireplace, which I tend to do daily, I grab a nifty little bundle of dried grass from the stack, and handful of the dried twigs. Getting the fireplace going is pretty easy with them, no need for fancy store-bought starter logs or supplies.

All along my chain link fence are many types of vines. But the vines I am especially interested in are the wild grapes. They are either too old to produce, or they are a naturally barren variety.
I don't grow them for the fruit, I don't even like grapes. I want the vines. These are invasive and unruly, however, I cut them down to their trunks in the fall, pull off all of the leaves and use the vines to make natural decorations, like wreathes to be decorated with fall leaves or Christmas baubles.

There is also my water garden, where I grow bulrushes and cattails. The long slender leaves of the cattail plants are great for decorating, lashing and I keep meaning to get around to weaving them into baskets or placemats. It's on my to-do list.

I do not consider myself an urban homesteader, and I have no desire to live on a farm at this point in my life. But utilizing my space in the most useful way possible just makes sense to me. Nature is very giving when you let it do it's thing.

Home Grown Cantina

Welcome to the Festival of Food Carnival. This month, we celebrate Recipes from the Garden!  Hosted by Diary of a First Child and Hybrid Rasta Mama, you're welcome to join us next time, or if you have a previously published recipe you'd like to share, add it to the linky below.
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What's not to love about a good cantina bowl? One of my favorite foods is Mexican-American and my favorite place to eat is Chipotle Mexican Grill. I know that Taco Bell has put out a pretty good imitation, and there have been many home recipes mimicking them both. I believe I have found the key to this specific flavor, however, and I have not only adapted the recipe to include more raw ingredients, I have dialed down the fat as well.

This is my healthy, more natural version of an already healthy and natural way of eating!

You may choose to add a seasoned beef or chicken, either tastes really nice. However, this recipe is meatless.

Notice my thick bed of lettuce in the above picture. This is one of those recipes where the fresher your ingredients, the better it will taste! Not all of my ingredients are grown at home, but most can be. Others can be found in your local farmers market. The few things that will need to be bought in the store can be bought raw and unprocessed. They are beans and brown rice, and of course some seasonings.

There are three layers to your cantina bowl (or burrito): Seasoned rice, black bean salsa and toppings.

Begin by cooking your beans. You will want to cook 1 cup of dry beans with however much water seems fitting. While it's true that you can buy canned beans, I prefer to cook from scratch. They do take extra time, but little work and canned beans contain some pretty ugly additives. I strongly suggest avoiding them. Simply cook the beans according to the package directions. They will take about an hour, two at the most. Cook them in the morning and allow them to cool. They will keep until you need them.

For the Rice

• 2 cups dried brown rice
• 2 cups water
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1 tsp. onion powder
• 2 tps. chili powder
• 1/2 tsp. cumin
• 1 tomato, seeded and pureed
• juice from 1/2 lime

Add all of the ingredients into a pan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes, or until rice is tender. Allow to cool

For the Black Bean Salsa

• 3 large ripe tomatoes, seeded and chopped
• 1 medium red onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 ear of fresh sweet corn, kernels removed (1 cup of frozen)
• 3 heaping tablespoons of chopped fresh cilantro
• juice from one whole lime
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1 tsp. pepper

Chop all of the ingredients and toss into a large mixing bowl. Drain the black beans and rinse them. Gently fold them in. Allow the salsa to sit for a little while in the refrigerator. The longer it sits, the more the flavors will meld together.

Once the rice has cooked and cooled, and the salsa has had a chance to stew for a bit, put a cupful of rice in the bottom of a bowl and add some salsa. If you have meat prepared, you can add it as well. Finish with your toppings.

Toppings

• fresh lettuce
• skim mozzarella cheese
• Fresh chopped avocado

You may choose to add sour cream or a lime ranch dressing, but this is a very good start. Serve with corn chips or tortillas or eat it straight with a fork. I like to make a batch of rice and a batch of salsa and keep them in the refrigerator. Putting a bowl together for my lunch is then super easy and I can eat deliciously healthy all week long. In the summer months - with tomatoes, fresh lettuce, cilantro, onion and corn straight from my garden, wholesome home grown eating is simple but exciting!

Do you have a garden? Do you have a favorite recipe using whole fruits and vegetables?

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Please take a moment to visit the blogs of our other Festival of Food participants. The links in this list will be live by the end of the day, as participants are all in different time zones.

• Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama shares Grilled Fennel and Tomatoes with Basil! This recipe brings together some of the freshest, most vibrant flavors from her garden into a simple dish that even her wee-one adores!  You can also find Jennifer on Facebook.
• Luschka at Keeper of the Kitchen shares a simple, summery salad of kale and parmesan, one of the only crops Luschka's managed to keep away from the snugs and snails so far this year. You can also find Luschka on Facebook.
• Sam in a guest post at Hobo Mama shares a garlicky, sweet, salty, and tangy topping for salads, sandwiches, pasta, and burgers and pairs it with a delightful dish that will help you use up the tomatoes and spinach fresh from your garden or farmers' market! You can also follow Hobo Mama on Facebook.
• Lindy at Poppy Soap Company shares a recipe for Grilled Peaches with Balsamic Vinegar. This easy recipe pairs well with protein heavy meals as a decadent and easy side dish! You can also find Lindy on Facebook.
• Angela from Earth Mama's World scored some 'imperfect' veggies from a local farmer's market and turned them into a perfect rosemary roasted veggie dish! You can also follow Angela on Facebook.
• Amy at Anktangle details two different methods of preserving hearty summer greens (such as kale and chard) so you can enjoy the variety—and nutritional benefits!—year-round. You can also follow Amy on Facebook.
• Destany at They Are All of Me creates low fat, healthy mock ups of some of her favorite restaurant dishes, using whole foods and ingredients from her garden. You can also follow Destany on Facebook.

Stay connected! Be sure to "Like" the Festival of Food Carnival Facebook page.

So... You Wanna Build a Water Garden?

I'm something of an addict when it comes to water gardens. I think I enjoy building them as much as I enjoy looking at them. Before I move onto the building, let me tell you why I must always have one.

Water gardens are ridiculously easy to grow. You practically have to try to mess them up. Trimming the plants back in the fall and mucking it out in the spring (that's a really gross chore, actually) is all of the maintenance it requires. I used to think a water garden had to have hundreds of dollars of electrical gear to maintain it. And believe me, there is no shortage of that stuff on the market! Leaf skimmers, UV filters, regular filters... it's a little crazy. Not to mention all of the chemicals you're supposed to dump in it. But, to be honest, I've just let them be for the most part and they get along quite well without me.

Water gardens attract and nourish local wild life. We usually always have tadpoles in the spring, and a resident bullfrog. The birds can get a bath or a drink of water, the squirrels, ground hogs, raccoons, you name it. And if we're lucky, we can see this once in a while! There's always snails and sometimes even leeches, water striders, dragon flies and other fascinating visitors.

I've built a few water gardens and I've lost count which one I'm on. So I'll start at the beginning.

This is what I started with, eight or nine years ago. The rental house I was living in had this funny wood framed box sitting in the middle of the backyard for no apparent reason.

The landlord said I could remove it if I put something better in it's place. So I decided to make a little pond.

I dug the hole, and then I dug up rocks from the very back of the yard. Actually, where I got the rocks was between the backyard and a creek that was owned by the city. So the city probably owned the rocks. I didn't think they would be missed. They were well underground and needed to be dug out. I also got my first liner for much less than was expected. I hadn't realized until much later that the store had it mismarked and they charged me for weed barrier. What should have cost me $60 was only $11. Like I said, I didn't know this until a year later.

Some gravel from another part of the yard, and some free mulch from the city dump and we were off to a pretty nice start. I didn't have a bench, but a neighbor let me have a stump to sit on.

I put a small ten dollar pump in it to keep the water moving since it had no plants at first.

I collected wild plants from the creek area, including bulrush and cattails. Visiting my local lake yielded some nice finds too, with a bit of duckweed. I had  hoped to find water lilies in the wild, but no luck. I purchased one from Walmart for $4.89.

I transplanted a few other plants from the woods nearby and some roses from the front yard.

The photo on the right is my first pond, which cost me less than $30 dollars - just from being resourceful, working really really hard and getting very lucky.

But if you're a ponder, you'll understand why this wasn't quite enough. You see, ponders always want bigger, better and more elaborate.

I wanted a bigger pond!

I met a really sweet lady from a pond forum on Garden Web. She had a rather large liner just sitting in her shed and wanted to give it to me. I accepted, but I wanted to gift her something in return.
She agreed to accept a large painting of her pond. I'm glad she did, that liner cost her $80 to ship to me! She also included some starts of some plants. Some of them made it, like the pretty soft pink grapefruit lily and the purple irises, and others didn't really like the weather up here. She was from Florida. Her painting took me a year and it's really quite large. But it was such a labor of love, let me tell you!

Thanks to her I was able to double the size of the pond. I used my old liner to put in an upper tier.

My landlord brought me over some hostas, and I built a little wooden bench from some branches (for the legs) and some pallets my husband brought home from work.

I was building stuff from pallets before Pinterest made it cool! :D

The only cost for this was the cost of supplies for the painting and the shipping - all of which totaled less than $10.



I quite loved the pond after this and continued adding found plants around the perimeter and at one point, we bought a wooden and metal bench from a yard sale for $5. Here are some pictures!

I built this little arbor from branches I found in the woods behind the yard.

I still have these purple water lilies, and they are still very prolific bloomers.

Each year I have to pull them up and cut back the roots and stems and repot them. If left alone, the roots would matt up all over the bottom of the liner.

I originally wanted a water garden so that I could have it as subject matter in my painting. But I've actually never gotten around to painting it.

I am able to take some rather nice photos, though!

This waterfall worked out for a year, but the upper pool leaked too much so I took it out.

It was nice while it lasted!

One day my husband announced that the house across the street from his ill father was available for rent. I didn't want to move, but it was important for him to be closer to his dad. I wasn't going to leave my water garden, though!

I drained the pond and put the plants into a kiddie pool, and then I dismantled the whole thing.

I laid the liner out to dry before folding it up.

 Each of these rocks was loaded up onto the back of the moving van and brought with us. Damn right. There was NO way I could part with them, having excavated each one by hand and carried it up a thirty degree slope!

Our landlords had been really good to us. We also felt that we had been good tenants and deserved to get our deposit back. Therefore I made sure this hole was filled in before we left. I dug up dirt from the creek area and hauled bucketful by bucketful and painstakingly filled it back up, with enough on the top to allow for settling. But you know, they still stiffed us on the deposit.

 The new house had a nice slope in the back corner of the yard. This seemed a great place to put the pond. The slope would be perfect for a larger waterfall, and it wasn't beneath a tree, which I always regretted in the previous house - it always filled up with leaves quickly!

Digging a hole for a water garden, you always want a deep end for deep water plants like lilies, and a shallow end for marginal like cattails and rushes.

And boy, was I right about the waterfall! It was beautiful!

But there were some problems with this. The pump required to run the waterfall was a power hog, so we didn't run it very often and dirt would pool up in the filter, clogging it. The pump sucked... literally and metaphorically. It was always breaking down and needing to be fixed. It leaked a lot, too.

No one ever saw the pond except for me, on days when I chose to walk all the way to the back of the yard and sit by it. And without any shade, I never wanted to! After three years, I decided to move it again.

By this time, we had purchased our house and could do whatever we wanted to it. We have a two tiered porch, that when we first moved in, had a stair case coming from the top balcony. We didn't like this staircase, partly because it looked an eyesore and partly because our little ones would use it to carry out their escape plans. After their third time sneaking out, we took the stairs off and had a rather empty space that was perfect for the pond.

I dug the hole so that it looked like the pond went beneath the porch. Moving the pond has shrunk it considerably, but it's important a water garden fit the space that it's in appropriately and this felt like the best size to sit beside the porch.

One day, I hope to build a second one on the other side of the porch so that it looks like the porch is sitting on top of a singular pond.

 My kids had quite a lot of fun that day helping me move the pond, though I believe I did most of the work while they played in the pit.

This hole wasn't quite so difficult to fill in, since I could backfill the dirt that I had dug out of it in the first place.

Here is the pond as it sits presently! It's filled to the brim with plants and snails, frog spawn and probably leeches. In this spot, everyone can see it and we enjoy it every day, even in the winter. You may notice there is no longer a pump on it, because I've decided that they are much more hassle than they're worth. One day I may add a spitter, who knows. There are three varieties of water lilies, the irises my friend had sent me, and the cattails and bulrushes that I pulled out of the creek in the very beginning.

You can build a water garden out of so many things! They can be large, medium sized (like the ones I've shown here), or they can be as small as a pretty bowl with some gravel in the bottom and lily growing out of it.

You can visit Garden Web's Pond and Aquatic Plants forum to get a lot of advice and see some really amazing ponds!

There are many books that you can buy or check out from the library, as well.

 Do you have a water garden? I'd love to hear about it!

So... you wanna make a clothesline?

I pretty much always use a clothesline in the summer. It helps me out for many reasons, and nothing as romantic as sheets that smell like honeysuckle or a fresh outdoor breeze, though.

The truth is, I quite enjoy hanging out the laundry and I can't explain to you why. It's time consuming and monotonous, but makes me feel... peaceful. I like that I can dry clothes in batches, and the laundry gets done much more quickly when I don't have to wait on the dryer. I like that I can dry larger things that won't fit in the dryer. I also like that the energy required doesn't cost me a penny.

My first clothesline at this house was made from repurposed lumber which we had leftover from an outdoor staircase we removed. I built it myself when my husband was at work and it worked really well. But I decided that the spot it was in needed a vegetable garden, so I took it down.


My second clothesline was this thing. It opens like and umbrella. We found it at a yard sale for $15. It lasted us 3 years, I believe, but this year it was done-for. The metal rods had rusted through and we couldn't repair it. It went to the scrapyard.

I have seen in my neighborhood some houses that have a long line reaching from the house itself to a tree or a post near the outside of the yard. The line is retractable and can be unhooked and coiled up to get it out of the way. I decided to make one of these. We just took the line out of the old umbrella hanger, but otherwise the cost would have only been $7 for the line and the hooks.







A couple durable steal hooks screwed into the utility post at the very edge of the back yard, and then a third bolted to the wooden brace on the corner of the house was all the installation it required.

If you don't have a utility pole, perhaps you have a shed, or a tree?

 

 

 The reason Joe staggered them was so it would be easier to wind the line around the two of them and prevent it from slipping off. We can adjust the slack as we need to.

When the line isn't being used, it can be coiled up and hung on the corner of the house, out of the way. This isn't a very tidy picture, but it can look neater than this.

 

 

For tips on properly hanging laundry, hop on over to Our Mindful Life! Kellie's got some great advice!

Around The Garden

I absolutely love to garden! I can't do much with plants indoors, though between cats and destructive forces (kids) it's not really my fault. But I do find that Nature is a far better mother when it comes to little green things than me. I don't use fertilizer or pesticides/fungicides/herbicides, I just yank the weeds and keep them watered. Most of my gardening success, however, can be attributed to planting things where they like to be and leaving them alone.

This plant is a one year old American Hazelnut. I got it for free last arbor day from a local wild-life center. It needs a mate, however, as hazelnuts need to be in pairs in order to produce nuts. You can see that empty spot behind it, just waiting. Hazelnut trees aren't hard to come by, but it hasn't been the highest order of priorities as of late. When I do get a partner for it, in a few years I'm going to have gobs of hazelnuts!

This is my watergarden. I built my first one nine years ago. It was very little, so later that year I got a larger pond liner and built it bigger. And then a friend I met on a pond forum mailed me a very large liner (twice as big as it is now) in trade for a very large painting of her pond.

Most of the plants in this little pond I have had since I first built it, eight years ago. It's been moved a couple of times. There are no fishes, save for minnows that I buy ever year to eat the mosquito larva, and no filtration or pump. It's a great little tadpole haven!

For Earth Day four years ago, my kid brought home a little twig with some dried up "hairs" stuck on the bottom and told me it was a dogwood tree. He had heard his dad say he liked dogwoods.

It's not the dogwood our son was expecting, but a quick google search told us it's a Red Osier Dogwood. I planted it, tended it lovingly and now it is getting quite large. It put out it's first set of flowers this year, even!

I am beginning to plant more native plants in my yard, and slowly getting rid of the non-native varieties. For years I have wanted a yard that was all native plants.

My daughter had other ideas, however, and insisted on planting some gladiolas. I also have some rudbekia from a trade that I botched. I feel guilty every time I look at them, but I love that they're getting ready to bloom already!

I found this and another growing along my back fence. I knew it was a native flower of some type, and a rather nice one. I put one on either side of the porch steps.

Part of the fun of finding plants like this is identifying them. I searched all over Google, but came up with nothing. I finally had to visit the Name That Plant forum at GardenWeb. They always help me out when I'm stuck!
This is in fact, Wild Petunia and I find that gleefully ironic, if you read my post about planting native!

Please excuse the plastic showing and the debris. We're going to be getting in some all natural wood chip mulch very soon!

This is a lilac, it's five years old. They are not the fastest growing plant. It is not a native plant species in my area, however they are quite commonly distributed and well established. This was a sucker (a shoot sprouted from a root of a parent) that I dug up and moved to another part of the yard. This is it's second home and I hope that we may get some flowers on her next season!

This is the mother lilac. It had been cut down to the roots when we first got the house five years ago. It is now extremely large, spanning eight feet at it's widest.
We've tried getting rid of it a couple of times, because it's just not in a very good place. It needs to be kept trimmed to be tidy, but doing so removes the flowers for the next year or two. Not trimming it, it becomes quite unruly and for the rather manicured front yard, it's not what we prefer.
It's here to stay, however, we haven't been successful trying to move it.

I am really torn about my rose bushes. I love roses! They look and smell so wonderful! As an artist, I love painting them. The reason I planted these here in the first place was so I could include them in my art.
But I'm really not into spraying and they always look so awful. Black spot sets in just a couple of weeks into spring and the roses never live up to their potential.
I do think that this fall I will give them to a neighbor and plant something native instead.

Except for this rose. I wish I had a better picture, it's so lovely!
This rose was given to me by a very dear friend for Mothers Day, just after my daughter was born. It's an heirloom rose, called Abbaye De Cluny.
This picture does not begin to do it justice, it is one of the most beautiful roses I've ever seen! I positively cherish it and I couldn't bear to lose it.

This photo is of our colossal white ash tree. It's hard to say how tall it is, though it's clearly twice as tall as our two story house. At it's base, it is easily six feet in diameter.
Last spring we had a dying juniper in our front yard that needed removing, and the tree cutter who came out remembered our house because of this tree. It's one of the largest of its kind in the city, he said, and has most certainly been around since before the house was built.

In the autumn, it puts on a beautiful display of yellow leaves, that sometimes turn a bit orange or purple at the tips. It's breathtaking!

I am very fond of this tree, though my husband talks about cutting it down. He likes his little joke. There's no way he's serious - or that I'd ever allow it!

This is a chain link fence. Every spring (except this year) I spend days cutting all of the poison ivy, wild grape vine, invasive ornamental vine, trumpet flower and honey suckle out of it.
This year I said, "screw it!" We'll work on maintaining it at fence level and hitting it with the weed whacker once a month. The honey suckle really is fragrant though. Sitting in bed in the mornings with the windows open and honey suckle air sweeping through the room is heavenly. It also makes the line dried laundry smell delicious!

This year I planted an herb garden. Sadly, most of the herbs didn't sprout. I am mostly disappointed about the lavender and the rosemary. I was looking forward to infusing oil with those herbs!
I did get a nice little crop of cilantro and parsley, however! This will do wonderfully in my home made salsa.

Ah, this little guy. This is my Mimosa Tree. I have always loved these trees, though they are not native to the united states. Unfortunately, they are also considered invasive. I planted this one on purpose and I refuse to get rid of it.

After trying to grow one from seed for two years, I was having no luck. One day, I was passing by my mothers old house. She lived only three blocks away from where I live now, but lost her home when her cancer took over and she died shortly after. Discovering upon passing that her house was on the market (ten years after she'd lived in it), I decided to investigate the property. It was very bitter sweet.  I saw her bedroom, her living room, the kitchen. So many memories, even though I myself did not live there with her. It was the first house she had ever owned and she was extremely proud of it. As I was leaving, I saw this tiny tree growing up in the most unlikely place. A small dime sized hole in the concrete driveway had this sad and desperate seedling poking out of it. I rushed to the car to find our stash of emergency napkins, doused two of them in water and oh so carefully teased this tiny tree up out of its home. I kept it in a pot on the porch at first, and now it's given a place of honor in the middle of the backyard.

My lettuce crop is thriving! I've planted eight varieties here, though one I found too unpalatable to eat and another went to seed. We've been chomping on this for a few weeks now, and will have a few weeks longer.

This is an unintended pumpkin plant. I found it growing in the compost pit, no doubt sprouted from last falls jack-o-lanterns.

I popped it in it's own little  bed so that I could tend to it, and it's very happy. I'm not sure if we'll get a good sized pumpkin out of it, but we'll see!

This is an unintended tomato plant. I didn't get a chance to buy tomato seedlings this year, however I've had over 20 volunteers crop up in random places.
I've culled many of them, but I have about 15 of them growing. I've read that fruit from volunteer plants are often tastier than ones that have been planted, as the plants themselves are hardier and easier to care for.

This looks like the pumpkin plant, but it's a cucumber. They are both from the squash family. I have probably 10 of these plants that have really shot up in size the past week.

Tomato and cucumber salad is one of my favorite summer dishes!