We are a family of impatient and over-extended gardeners, so we don't start lettuce as early as we can, or should, for our climate, and by the time we do, we're ready to eat those fresh greens now. The solution is to buy seeds and started greens at the same time. Plant the seeds, give them a good watering, cover them with wet burlap, and while they wait to sprout, your starts are already hale and hearty.

The clumps are the giveaway.




Salad burnett has a lovely peppery flavor. You can eat it on its stems or easily strip the tiny leaves from the stems for a more delicate texture.


Sorrel, a personal favorite - both for its vibrant purple ribs and its sweet and lemony flavor.


Mesclun greens, best eaten this big or smaller. Flavors range from slightly bitter and licorice-y (the serrated, long green leaves) to hot mustard (the purple and green mustard leaves) to sweet and tender (a looseleaf lettuce thrown into the mix).

But see? We are growing them from seed, too. Here's our new lettuce bed, which is well-shaded for the Texas heat. It is also somewhat sheltered by the nearby crepe myrtles, so we're hoping it will make a nice space for a makeshift coldframe to inspire us to finally buckle down and grow some winter greens next fall.


We have a lot of petrified wood.


Family stepping stones are a fun garden accent and a great project to help young children remember and celebrate their loved ones. This one was made during a visit by some dear friends, a couple and their then one-year-old son. You can find out how to make them today on Z Recommends.


Wonder how this back edge will turn out... not very weedy, but will the weeds love the new soil?

We supplemented the flavorful greens from our garden with some good old-fashioned foraging.


A discarded broccoli plant yielded some surprisingly tasty flowers that would add a great visual accent to our salad. It isn't even in a pot anymore! Flowers in salad are always fun, and broccoli flowers, as it turns out, are quite sweet.



Another depleted broccoli plant yielded up some spindly broccoli. Broccolini, I say. It's as tender and flavorful as the stuff you'd pay too much for at the grocery store.


Then we went hunting for one of my favorite greens of the season.


Would you believe it's in this picture?


Green briar, a prickly vine in our Texas climes, would hurt anyone but a goat under most circumstances. But the tiny green shoots? Delectable.


Preparing the meal took under half an hour, much of the time spent making a new invention of Z's - cut-out pieces of flatbread toasted in our toaster oven, which made fantastic croutons.



Setting the table.



A meal of fresh salad with balsamic vinaigrette, plus spicy chipotle field roast (fake sausage) for Mom and Dad, and garlic-stuffed green olives, acai and blueberry juice, and hummus for everyone.




A lovely way to start our spring!

Sky Full of Bacon's all-vegetarian forage-fest. Inspiring!



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