Lemon Verbena

We planted Lemon Verbena in the garden.... great as a tea, lemony... you can mix in some mint leaves also... or to garnish fruit salads maybe...

tiny baby rabbits

Fresh green chickpeas from the pod are wonderfully tasty and sweet... have you ever tried them?... and you can't find them easily... they remind me of my primary school days when farmers would sell them outside of our school yard in little bouquets.... so I planted chickpeas last year... plenty... they grew nicely... and one day they all disappeared... who ate my chickpeas?... and then I saw a rabbit in the garden... so I had mixed feelings for rabbits since then... until yesterday... when I saw these little guys in our community garden... not on our plot but another plot that I planted chickpeas last year also for donation... I counted 5 baby rabbits... they are really tiny (~3 inches)... and super cute... their eyes are closed... they push each other and jump once in a while... too cute... now I like rabbits again... but I won't plant chickpeas for myself this year... might plant some for them though!
ps: I think I know who ate most of our pea seeds this year!

addition: landscaped business cards anyone?

ostrich fern & fiddleheads

this fern is just sooo green and big, you just want to dive into it, at least I do...
well well, interestingly the young shoots are edible and called fiddleheads (cute name), who would know? and the fiddlehead capital of the world is, are you ready, Tide Head in New Brunswick in Canada... I thought for a while that we could go there easily, but it is far far away, 13 hours driving... so I better find some fiddleheads to make this Marinated Fiddlehead Salad...
(coincidentally Apartment Therapy Kitchen section also talks about fiddleheads today!)

rain is coming

Now that our garden is half planted, we look forward for a good rain.... Michael took this picture from his client's roof in Manhattan... amazing contrast!

(that building cuts like a knife ;)

Red Russian Kale

I love KALE.... so fantastic... here are the sweet babies, soon they will become huge leaves and I am gonna eat them as SALAD:

Cut the kale leaves to half an inch slices, then massage with some sea salt for 20 sec., then add dressing: olive oil, lemon juice and just a little agave nectar (or honey), and you can add whatever else you like: avocado, carrots, sprouts, red onions, etc. yum yum ;)

last year's leeks

Leeks are great, these ones we planted last year but they weren't big enough by fall so we just left them in the garden over the winter... but they seem to be ready now, I think I will pick them tonight and make a Turkish leek dish we love. (update: I made the dish, but instead of rice I used Quinoa, which turned out to be more delicious and nutritious!)

cold frame (before/after)

So we have this cold frame Grandma bought Michael for his birthday one year... we use it for winter growing. There are two pieces of plastic to cover the top. End of April, we forgot to open the covers in a very hot day and some things got almost cooked in there, ops! Here is the picture to prove the unhappy plants from April 22nd.

And look how they are right now below, 2 weeks later, we don't cover the top anymore as it doesn't go freezing during the nights. The picture is from May 6th. Arugula already seeded with flowers. They all seem to be doing fine, many kinds of lettuce, some radish, green onions, mint, etc.

tulips & cats

Pretty two color tulip! One of the things we are very happy about the community garden is to meet many cool people. We were visiting one of them last weekend at her home, and these tulips got my attention, but actually her cat wanted my attention (you are looking down at him!)

BIG MAMA!

M. was turning our compost and look what turned up! Okay, left is a big garden fork, but look at the lady on the right, of course I uncovered the soil and here is a nude picture of her below! We felt like we found a treasure when we saw this humongous worm, I would say it was half an inch thick, and maybe 10 inches long... anyways it was a beauty, M. calls her "Big Mama" ;)

We then covered her with soil again and left more yummy compost nearby, hope she is happy... It is really amazing how our soil has changed since we got the garden. At first the soil was dead, just small rocks, thousands of them, as they used our area for the highway construction... right now the soil is alive again... and so many treasures are hidden!

lilac in bloom

Outside of our community garden there are some beautiful plants, here are the two which are in full bloom right now... and smells wonderful!
The red flowers are the Flowering Quince.

printing garden

Last saturday I just kept silkscreening this image! dozens of times, on bags, tshirts, paper... couldn't get enough, this is a beautiful old image I found in an old gardening catalog from 1974.
When I am not in the garden I am still planting I guess ;)

lemon tree mosaic

There is a cool site called Image Mosaic Generator! to generate your own mosaic pictures for free in a very short time, try it, it is fun! Click on the picture above to see the details...