Author: Yinglan

I have no shortage of edibles in my backyard and front yard gardens. After all, I eat mostly out of it during the summer.

There was a rainstorm about a week ago. I love the look of the garden after a storm. The water droplets on the leaves made for a great photo opportunity and I got to play with my macro lens filters because I find the camera focuses better on small subjects (like water droplets) with a sort-of magnifying glass attached. I love how the pictures turned out.

These are kale leaves, by the way. I doubled my kale production this year from 3 plants to 7 plants this year – 2 dinosaur kale and 5 Red Russian kale. Ever since June, I’ve been eating kale once a week – cooking it down in a broth. I didn’t know what it was doing to my gut but it didn’t take long to find out. I believe it was the thing that contributed to my 7-pound weight loss in 2 months.

I also have herbs in my garden this year. I had dill in late spring and early summer before it went to seed, making a corner of my garden smell like dill pickle. That’s one of my favorite smells and often found myself visiting that corner of the garden just to inhale the scent since I’m not going to get to make my pickles this year (thanks a lot, earwigs).

After heavily pruned the Holy Basil back in July, it’s starting to grow back again, producing more of that bubblegum pink blooms. Did I mention it smells like bubblegum? Another one of my favorite corner this year.

Finally, lemon balm. I love the smell, too. It doesn’t smell like lemon. It smells like one of those lemon-flavored super sour hard candy. It was a herb I wish I had last year because it was one of the plants that died on me. This year, however, I have such an abundance of it that I don’t know what to do with.

Last but not least, I can’t forget the most obvious edibles in the garden. I’ve sowed a new round of snow peas for the fall garden, hopefully, those will emerge soon, before I get anxious. I’ve had a few of the Japanese cucumbers and they were, so far, the best variety I’ve grown so far as they don’t get bitter.

The strawberries are getting ready for another flush as the temperatures cool. I’m looking forward to it. I’m loving the sweet banana peppers this year and am considering replacing my usual bells with this pepper in the future. I’ve eaten at least 10 of these already and my bell peppers have not even produced one. So disappointing this year.