I know I've said it before but I'll say it again: this is the best time of year. It's been so rainy and humid and hot that you can practically see the plants growing. When I first moved here I hated hated all the humidity because it makes my hair erupt in frizz. But now I just have to look out in the garden and see how green and fresh everything is and I don't worry about the frizz (and coconut oil does wonders for dry, frizzy hair, if you're wondering.) Just look how much things have grown since last week:
I specifically took this picture of this little fig bud because I knew it would come out soon. Here it is on May 19th (that's five days ago, people):
And here it is this morning! And yes, I did get up extra early just to take pictures of my garden:
Hey, little fig! I'm excited for you! Now you have more than two leaves and I feel less like you're on the verge of dying. Keep up the good work, kid.
I picked lots of this arugula for dinner last night but as of this morning it was still going strong:
I also picked lots of the spinach last night and it really is the brightest shade of green:
Seriously, the spinach and arugula is so flavorful you really don't need to do much with it. I've never been much of a salad eater (feels too "diet food" to me unless it's smothered in ranch dressing in which case I'll eat it all) but I do love some gently wilted greens on pasta. Last night I picked a bowlful of arugula, spinach and lettuce, rinsed them well and tossed them in a pan with some miso and a little bit of hot water to dissolve the miso. I was worried because I didn't have any garlic or onions but the greens were so tasty on their own they really didn't need anything more. When the greens were wilted (only a minute or two on the heat) I emulsified (that's a fancy word for "mixed") the miso sauce with some butter and then dumped some cooked pasta in and mixed it all together. Some salt and pepper and a little of the reserved pasta cooking water to keep it from getting too dry and it tasted surprisingly delicious and it was totally easy. In case you're wondering, here are the seeds these guys were grown from:
I chose that spinach based on the name (obviously) but I've since read some things about it and apparently it's fairly sought-after for its taste. I'd agree! I prefer to eat my spinach when it's still little so it's not bitter but sometimes it still gets that weird taste in your mouth - almost kind of gritty, you know? Well, this one has none of that. Pure delicious.
And the tomatoes are growing so fast that I'm going to have to start pinching these suckers off soon:
I left these on last year but I think I'm going to start taking them off to see if I can't get more tomatoes and less foliage out of my plants this year. We'll see!
Oh let's check back in with the sunflowers, which are just over two weeks old now:
So big! Time to replant soon.
And lastly the rain has caused my little (huge) feverfew to bloom. The foliage is big but the flowers are like miniature little daisies: