Oregon Tree Hugger

That is how cold it suddenly got last night. What is left of the warm-weather crop was not very happy about it. The end is coming very soon. Click on the image for a larger view.

Click on any image for a larger view and a slideshow of all images. This year was so bad for tomatoes that I got ONE chocolate cherry tomato. This is the same variety I ate barrels of last year, and this year I ended up with one. The original bush was snapped off about a [...]

I have never grown these before, but they sounded fun. Ground cherries are a type of tomatillo that is more sweet than tart. I’m having a lot of fun with the tomatillos because they have an automatic shutoff on the ripening process, thereby taking out the guesswork. Essentially, when the husk becomes brown and the [...]

This is the first year I have grown cauliflower, but I love eating it (especially with onion dip HA). I had no idea what to get but this was called Amazing Cauliflower so I couldn’t go wrong … right? The first head matured and was cut today, and it really is quite amazing. The taste [...]

So I have two "members" in my little CSA now who pick up weekly boxes. It’s helping to fund the garden for us to eat, which sort of helps me to mentally justify the expense of it all. (If you think about it, a small addition to the garden is allowing me to have enough [...]

The sun finally peeked through for a few hours on Friday evening, and I swear the plants took it as an opportunity to double in size. Those vile mosquitoes also took it as a reason to break out of hibernation — after only an hour of sun, one landed on my arm (and was immediately [...]

Why fight nature? It’s much easier in terms of time and maintenance to work with it … and a lot more visually pleasing. I am going to try to keep a lot of the area under the trees somewhat natural. I pulled out a lot of the dandelions because they do totally take over if you let them, but I left a lot of these nice little groundcovers and poppies to grow somewhat unhindered. The result (I hope) is a natural-looking sort of woodsy area that will have a calming feel.

I can’t help it, I have fallen in love with the weeds in my yard. What will I keep and what will I cull? Follow the link to the rest of the article to give your own opinion on what should stay and what should go! (I’ll give bonus points for anyone being able to identify these things!)