Love the grey skies. It's been wet the last couple of weeks. Feels like I've watered only twice this year.

This is the part that was behind the fava beans above.

     

The collards give me a big cooking of leaves every couple of weeks or something like that. Last year I got all the collards I wanted to eat from these plants, and plenty to give some away every now and then. Great crop.

Some of the collard crowns are becoming aphid farms. I'm going to leave them to do their thing as ladybug bait. Hope it works out.

     

The rose bush I moved from behind the grape vine is loving the sun!

The rain has been good for my cuttings. Looks like this male kiwi is budding. If it grows I'll be back to having Kiwis next year or the year after. So hopeful right now!

The mugwort is coming back about the way it did last year. I get runners here and there, but I pull them and that keeps it from growing out of hand.

      

At the OSH going out of business sale last fall I'd gotten a six pack of chard starts. I planted a lot of them here and there in this garden and the last few in Virginia's yard.

Those kales are also from the ones I planted last summer.

That tomato was an implulse purchase at Costco a week or two ago. They had tomato starts in half gallon buckets, three for $8.99 or something like that. So excited to have them growing well already. I know a cold snap would kill them, but I'm hoping it doesn't happen. If they are still growing strong in two weeks likely they will give me great crops. Lately I've been pondering the idea that "People who wait until April to plant tomatoes don't believe in climate change." Used to be if you didn't wait until April you were Guaranteed to lose the tomatoes to frostbite. This might be the third year in a row I get away with it!

     

The winter crop was broccoli and beets. Planted a six pack of broccoli starts. Ate all the crowns and a whole bunch of secondary harvests. Likely I could have grown and eaten as many as four times as many!

The beets are working out great. Ended up with two beds of the things. We've been eating them as the fresh vegetables in a couple of meals a week for a month. Up close and personal with where the "red diaper baby" term came from. Everything anywhere near the beets during cooking turns red. Same thing with chewed up food in your system and even your urine. I'm feeling like a red stripe on the flag because of them. Enjoying that old saying "Beet the system!"

Last summer one time I way over hacked back the watercress. Thought it was done for. The extreme wetness of the ground seems to have revived it. Not only that but a seedling came up next to it in just the right place. Gotta go back to harvesting that stuff. Nice when cooked or as a sharp flavored spice in salads.

     

The kale bush continues to be a regular source of lots of greens.

The rest of my beets are in this patch. Generally what I've been doing is harvesting the biggest beets that are also the most crowded. Often when I pull up a beet I get a bycatch of some seedlings, too. I push one or two of those into the new gap. The rest I scatter around the garden, just push them into the ground where I want to add a plant. Some of those are doing quite well in their new homes. That will be extending beet season on the back end at least a bit.

Enjoying all the green in this view. Knowing that I'll eat a lot of it makes it sweeter.

I get most of the greens I eat at home from this end of my plot. So grateful for all those plants!

     

              

After I learned that there would be no kiwi crop next year I cut the kiwi way back. So far all it's done is weep from the wounds, but it does look like some buds are swelling.

So happy to see the grape vines coming back!

    

From each of those broccoli plants I got a head that was the size of a fist on the ones I fertilized. Then I got a whole bunch of secondary harvest! Little broccoli heads grew out of the base of each leaf. After I harvested those the plants gave up. Time to pull them. The ground is so wet right now that not much pulling is required.

The raspberries are just starting to come out of hiding. I cut them back to nothing much after they went to sleep last fall. They're waking up just fine.

The plot next door was this old Russian guy's. He stopped coming around so when he didn't renew they reallocated his space into two smaller plots. Watching those for clues about my new neighbors.

The eastern plot is still fallow.

There are signs of life in the west...

The great thing about having plenty of homegrown kiwis is figuring out good ways to use them. Putting a ripe kiwi in a peanut butter sandwich is a great thing to do. Yummm! I want to do that again...