Real Food. Real Easy.

By rights, all I should be doing right now is studying for the exams I have tomorrow. Instead, I went into the yard this morning with the dogs. From the window, I had seen it blooming, and I just had to get a close-up view. Had to.

This gorgeous yellow flower is the lone Russian Red Kale that survived the winter in my garden. In the fall, I was so busy with school... parenting... surviving... that I never cleaned up the garden for winter. When the snow hit, the garden was a wreck. Completely overgrown. *Sigh* I figured I would take care of things in the spring. But the spring semester has been even crazier than the fall and it hasn't happened.

Several weeks ago, however, I took a wrong turn in the yard and ended up staring a monster of a kale plant right in the face. Literally. The trunk on this thing is thicker than my drinking glasses. At that point, it had put out lots of new growth and was just starting to think about flowering. Free food! Exactly when there was nothing fresh locally, too. I pinched back it's first flower foray and harvested a surprising quantity of leaves. And then another. But eventually, it seemed cruel and pointless to stop this plant from flowering. It really wanted to. It was supposed to. And if it did, there would be more kale plants. So I left it alone to do its thing- and it has. It's beautiful. The trunk, stems, and leaf veins are purple, the leaves green, and the flowers this cheerful yellow. It's such a pretty plant that it left me wondering where I could use it in a flower border. Seriously. It's that pretty. And hey, people use those ugly, stinky ornamental cabbages- so why not kale?

But the kale wasn't all I found in the garden today. I also found an army or lettuce. Seriously. Check out the formation to the left. The solid green is Amish Deer Tongue, and the speckled is Forellenschluss (aka Speckled Trout Back, etc). Or perhaps I should say, that's what they were last year. Because I was not paying attention, I do not know if the lettuces flowered at the same time. They may be hybrids; or not. At this point, I don't care. I have an entire bed of lettuce growing, for which I did exactly nothing. In addition to these two, I've found exactly one head of this lovely (but poorly photographed) lettuce. I don't remember it's name, but will have to look it up and plant some more. It is really pretty! As you can imagine, I was thrilled so much lettuce going strong in the garden with no effort from me. But the bounty didn't

end there. The grapes that came with the property, whose trellis was all but obliterated by the series of storms over the winter, are leafing out. I haven't told them, but I've been thinking about pulling them out, rebuilding a stronger, better trellis, and planting grapes we actually like. The strawberry bed I put in last year is going like crazy. Apparently strawberries enjoy a certain degree of neglect because I have never seen strawberry plants this big. There are weeds everywhere, and still these plants make every effort to do what they are designed to do. If I remember to cover the strawberry bed to keep out the birds, it looks like we should have a bumper crop this year. How awesome is that? But wait, there's more! Despite my best effort to clean all the potatoes out of

the bed last year, one potato plant has come up. At this point, I'm inclined to leave it be for now and see what happens. You're not really *supposed* to do that- in order to prevent diseases from building up in the soil. But what the heck- let's live a little!
Then there's the chard, in red and yellow, and the corn salad that have seeded freely. And the hop vine running towards the sun. And the onions that didn't get pulled last year, but which I tried to pull early this spring and then gave up on because they were uber slimy, they are looking lovely as they prepare to go to seed.
As a gardener, and especially as a master gardener, I should be ashamed of myself for letting my garden fall into such a state. But as a real person with real responsibilities that have to come before the garden, I have to acknowledge that things happen. Usually, though, when "things happen" they don't result in free food sans work! Seeing the unplanned, yet very welcome, bounty in the garden- and the sheer beauty of some of these plants when allowed to go full cirlce,

has me thinking a lot about how and why we relegate food plants
to a garden of their own. Many plants from the food garden would be truly lovely mixed in with ornamentals. How about a walkway lined with gorgeous lettuce? Or kale as the backdrop to flowers? Onions provide interesting structural elements and the cool flowers common to all alliums. Strawberries might make a fun groundcover. Edible landscaping is not a new idea. But I'm not sure why its not more popular. I'm guessing people have just never seen the possibilities open to them. But it's worth having a good think over, because the potential exists to produce a lot of food without giving up the interest and decorative value of traditional landscape plants. Do you have an edible landscape? I would love to hear how you incorporate food with fun in your garden.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday hosted by Food Renegade.