Catching up on baby greens and unidentified plants

Sorry I've been absent from this blog in a while. I've been mostly tending to my family and my job and occasionally tending me and a garden. I finally updated the writings section of addiebroyles.com, where you can find all of my most recent articles and columns. If you've been checking Relish Austin, you will have seen my backyard/Victory garden go from two boxes of dirt to a budding produce aisle.

I've been cooking a lot for work lately. I tried to brew kombucha, but my SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) grew a mold in the first week! I was so bummed, but I'm going to give it another try. Ian and I are going to make a shepherd's pie tonight with Loncito lamb, THE Central Texas lamb dude. (Julian and I actually met and talked with Loncito - that's his first name - at the farmers' market today. Nice guy. Passionate about meat.)

As you can see, I have plants growing out of the bottom of my compost pile. I uploaded a bunch of garden and kombucha-making pictures to flickr. If you can tell me what those plants are, I'd be very grateful. Ian says the are potatoes; he's eager to eat them.

Here are our two garden beds. One is filled with carrots, beets, onion, shallots, garlic, dividing onions, chives, purple and white onions, broccoli, spinach, kohlrabi, flowers and lettuce.



The other box has peas, flowers, onions and a "spring mix" of greens.



In the "non-gardening fun" category, we've reconnected with Tasha, the wonderful friend who introduced Ian and me. It had been about three years since we'd stopped hanging out so much, but Tasha and I kept running into each other. When we finally got together for dinner, we fell in love with her girlfriend, Camille, and remembered why we befriended Tasha in the first place. They really connected with Julian. We went out to dinner last night and they all worked together on this painting. Even Camille, who is a bona fide painter, loved Julian's nontoxic, plasticy paint.