How does our garden grow

Every once in a while, when I remember, I see what's new at The Yellow House. The woman who runs the blog updates it sporadically, but she's a lovely writer and her recipes are simple and inspiring. Her recent post is about the pleasures of growing greens, and I nodded my head along with each sentence. This year I scrapped my usual ambitions of warm weather vegetables (though Mike stepped in and planted those anyway) and stuck with leafy greens: butter lettuce, chard, mizuna, a few types of arugula, and whatever other seeds I saw at the store.

Salad greens are always renewing themselves, and so I can make a week's worth of small salads with a bunch of kale from the store filled out with greens from the garden. My favorite fixings these days are fresh corn sliced from the cob, avocado, pistachios (we bought a giant pre-shelled bag, a glorious thing), some white beans, and croutons made from toasted homemade bread. Yesterday I picked up fresh chickpeas to throw in tonight; they're a pain to shell but look like neat little green brains.

I took these photos in harsh midday light, so apologies for the shadows, but I had to share anyway. We dote on this garden, and I fiddle with it - replanting this, moving this here - pretty much every day. It is our baby, our food baby.

It's looking great these days, isn't it? It'll take a little bit of time for everything to fill in, and there's always more (mulching) to do, but it's a place we want to spend as much time as we can - at least until the fog rolls in. The cats agree; they spend their days outside now, sitting in the sun, chasing butterflies, rolling around in the dirt, or curling up against me if I nap on the bench. You're welcome to come on over, anytime.