Popped Amaranth

Did you know you can take a tablespoon of amaranth grains, throw them in a HOT skillet, and stir and shake tons…and they’ll pop up all white and fluffy?  It’s amazingly fun to watch, and I ate mine in a bowl with milk and sugar.  They were really good!  Clean up afterwards…I recommend a damp rag.

Front Garden Update

It’s been a cold spring so far, but let’s go on a tour!

Garlics- the fat ones are from cloves from my grandpa’s garden, the skinny ones are from the grocery store. I’m amazing these have survived- I planted them in October, and they popped right up! They were 8-12 inches tall through the entire winter, with deep freezes and snow. This is my first time growing garlic, and they’re interspersed with wild roses- garlic and roses “love” each other, right?

The VERRY small sprouts you see are onions. But look at this.

More onions, but away from the roses. They’re inches shorter! OK, I’ll always plant my alliums in the rose patch.

Here are those rose garden onions again. Mmmm.

You can see the roses aren’t very large- I pulled them out of a freecyler’s yard last year, let them root in a bucket of dirt, and then planted them in the Fall. I was so glad to see them leafing out this spring!

I adore this bush- it’s lungwort, or pulmonaria. The original plant was in my grandparent’s yard. I brought a piece to our first house, and when we moved I took it with us! Last year it relocated to the backyard to escape the earth movers, and I put it back in the front last Fall when everything was settled down again. It looks big enough to divide again- I want to cover more ground with this plant, and luckily it divides well.

A little stepping path by the front patio- I knew the kids would like this, but I didn’t know how MUCH toddlers would enjoy stepping from stone to stone!

Strawberry bed. Another thing I was grateful to see putting out leaves in the spring- all the old foliage died after I transplanted these last year (another Freecycler project, as are the daylilies you see in the background along the wall.)

Blueberries- we put in three bushes. All are high bush, one is an early fruiter and two and mid-season fruiters. Yum!!

The garden beds. Right out front. I do a little internal “fist pump” every time a neighbor compliments us on our yard, because not everyone would appreciate veggie beds in plain view. Lucky for us, this is MUCH nicer than what the yard used to be!

Fig tree. We got one delicious fig last year, and I’m hoping for more this year. We amended the soil and re-dug the hole last year because it was basically sitting in a pot-sized hole in hard clay.

Garden beds from the driveway. So far I’ve put in lettuce and broccoli transplants, and spinach, kale, turnip, chard, and radish seeds. The radish and spinach are the only seeds to sprout.

The wall, as seen from the driveway. Marigolds, day lilies, and strawberries!

Sad little pea sprouts. I put in at least 50 seeds, in neat rows, and after all the rain and crows…this is what sprouted. Need to plant some more!