We've had these two ground vines growing for a while now. One decided to sprout right in the middle of our walk way. But we've just been walking around it in hopes that it grows something. I keep thinking watermelon and I keep watching. It has been flowering beautifully for WEEKS but then nothing comes of those flowers. I thought maybe they weren't being pollinated but just last week I was happy to see bees in the flowers and just last night I noticed this....
!!!!
2 of these to be exact. Yep, I'm thinking my watermelon guess was right. How did these volunteer? Well, we DID plant watermelon seeds, in a jiffy tray in these funny little preformed soil blocks. Nothing took. We were bummed. Then Zac accidentally dropped the jiffy tray and we figured that was the end of that tray.
Apparently not!
This gangly plant has been going nuts in my galvanized pot by the front steps. I eventually staked it like a tomato when it got top heavy. We had no clue with this one but we were THRILLED when the beautiful star shaped yellow flowers turned into these....
TOMATILLOS!
Zac makes an AMAZING salsa and he's very excited to harvest his own tomatillos AND tomatoes to use this year.
How did the tomatillos get there? NO CLUE! Its so neat. We tried doing tomatillos from bought plants last year in our little back kitchen garden (before turning the front yard into an edible garden) and those tiny store bought plants did nothing. They made tiny little tomatillos that browned just as soon as they looked remotely promising and then they littered the ground. I let them just fall, as I do with most things, in hopes that they'd reseed themselves. Now the bunnies are in that yard in the back. All we can think is we fertilize our front yard with bunny fertilizer and maybe that's how the seed was transported. Except....the old kitchen garden was raked clean of plants in preparation for the bunnies. I don't know. But we have composted for 7 years now and I've learned that when you compost, volunteers occur regularly. I get very excited about volunteers as I see them as proof that we're doing something right.
We have a good little handful of volunteer sunflowers. Some came up in our rock parking area and the kids always reminded us not to run over the plants when we parked. So as soon as they were big enough, I moved them into the garden. This week we got our first bloom!
And this was just so neat. I don't know if you can tell, but that's a picture of our lemon cucumber (not a volunteer) using our volunteer sunflower as a trellis. Cucumber on left, sunflower on right. A good little picture of permaculture. :)
And just for fun, here's Lissy doing what she does EVERY night. After being tucked into bed, she watches me water the garden. Most nights, she falls asleep on the window sill. She loves it when I spray her window with water unexpectedly. Can you see the book she's displaying in her window? Its the book she chose for read aloud last night. She's been carrying it around for a few days now and I didn't even notice the title until she asked me to read it for read aloud time last night. I totally forgot I'd bought this vintage book at a rummage sale, and I don't know where she found it. If you can't read the title, its The Wonderful Way That Babies Are Made. :) So, tonight my big kids got their first mini lesson in the birds and the bees. It went great! We like to be really honest with our kids while trying to keep the content appropriate for their ages. But when it comes to birth (which this book touched on), I'm very open. Logan watched me deliver Kian and it was an amazing experience. If we have more babies, I'd like all the kids there to witness it. This read aloud went great and Felicity talked about how she wanted to be a Mama when she "gets big," which just made my heart swell. Hopefully she'll want her Mama around when she becomes a Mama. :)
I love your posts Jenny. Makes me feel a bit closer and definitely tied in.
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