outdoor plants

the outside garden is still a source of joy.


the east bed has strawberries along the edge, massive amounts of salad greens up the back there, spring onions and garlic off to the left, various herbs, and root veggies in the middle-ish. it also has the poor sad tomato plants, which have repaid all my careful nurturing with lack-lustre growth:


(the wire is to stop the neighbourhood cats from pooing in the garden - they dig up plants when they scratch.)


the western bed has upstairs-neighbour-S's flowers, and the cauliflowers.


there's also broccoli, nasturtiums, the peas climbing up the bed-frame against the fence, corn that a random woman across the alley gave us, capsicums (grown from dinner!), cucumbers, potatoes, swiss chard and about a million zombie-squash plants which came out of the compost.

the five of us (three in my household, two upstairs) started out planning the beds so carefully, with tall plants up the back, and some companion planting rules in play (tomatoes and basil! broccoli and thyme!). then we got into it, and now there's random stuff everywhere. we also discovered that you can dig random holes in the gravel and just shove stuff in. look! artichokes!


there's also a rhubarb plant up the back, near the compost bin.


here's roomie-M's raspberry patch. we found out that garlic and raspberries grow well together, so we put some garlic cloves in there too, and they're doing fine. (also a zombie-squash.)


we also planted some lemon seeds one time when we were making lemon and poppyseed cake. it took them about three months to germinate, but here they are!

i found out that lemon trees are considered exotic here, like something that you saw one time when you were a kid on holiday in california.