Flower Fridays!

There are violets popping up all over. Here’s information on Viola odorata on Wikipedia

You can eat wild violets, its a good Spring foraging plant, and here’s a recipe for Wild Violet Jelly 

If you really like violets, you could join the American Violet Society

These kale plants in the bottom of the picture are getting ready to flower, at the top of photo are snap peas, just coming up. But in the corner by the wooden post is horseradish, which has two different types of leaves. Its always around Passover that the leaves start growing to eatable size.

This kale was planted in 2019 and it overwintered in the garden, in it’s second year greens like kale will do its best to flower in order to create seeds at the first warm spring weather.

I cut his bit off the larger kale plant and ate it. But next week it sent out more flower buds.

from my friend Scott, about the Morris-Jumel Community Garden (w162nd street, NYC)

Hey everyone! We are having the Spring explosion right now so get over to the garden soon if you haven’t yet. The forsythia, thundercloud plum, apricot, and peach in the front are at peak this week. The Bradford Pear is giving us Disney Magic with a swirl of petals in the breeze. The hellebores are in beautiful slow motion as they technically aren’t blooming yet. They turn their faces up to the sun. There are both regular & grape hyacinths and if you’re lucky you can smell them. Daffodils are in full bloom and the very first tulips opened today.The glory-of-the-snow aka wood hyacinth are blooming as well. We are actually in a sort of calm before the storm as the Summer flowers are far off.

For those of y’all who are not aware, my apartment faces down onto our garden. I have become much more aware of the birds in the garden as the city is almost silenced. There is almost always the chatter of our flock of sparrows chirping away. Also chirping are a pair of cardinals you can catch from time to time. But the stars of our garden are undeniably the mockingbird & the blue jay. They both are very loud and always have a comment about whatever you say to them. We also see a flock of seagulls on the block but for some reason they are quiet. They never seem to visit our garden either. Occasionally there is an odd bird: a lost sea bird or robin, but these are the birds of your neighborhood! Be safe! ️Scott

We all had a great time at our first Flower Fridays! online class We talked about flowers, what we had for breakfast, our favorite toys, a cat, and many other things. Some of you even wore flowers on your clothes and had flowered accessories to show. It was nice to meet everyone.

The big white flowering tree is a Bradford Pear - but its ornamental, doesn’t produce pears. There are a lot of these trees around.