Surprise, it's Garlic!

After seeing the kids onto the bus, I took a look at my zombie garden.
The neighbor has been raking her leaves and putting it out to the curb for the trash to pickup. When I am able, I take a wheelbarrow over there and shovel up the leaves with the kids, and then proceed to dump the leaves all over my gardens. I figure it's free nitrogen and worm food. She has told me in the past to feel free to take her leaves :) (Whilst I sit back and wonder why she sprinkles fertilizer on her trees/lawn, and then bags up all the clippings and leaves for the trash to haul away. It's a vicious cycle of her losing all the fertilizer she's putting into the place.)

As I scanned the garden, the tomatoes were all droopy, and the sesame leaf stems were drying out to be stiff in the wind... and I saw something growing out of the leaf mulch. huh... looks like... GARLIC?! That's Madness!

I planted that in the Spring, and I didn't see it growing at all! In fact all summer, while I was tending my garden, I was somewhat disappointed that only 1 garlic stem was growing. By the time Fall arrived, I pulled that 1 garlic to find... 1 big bulb on the bottom. Wow that really didn't look like Garlic at all. But now, here... every single one of them are greeting me... WTFFFFF??

So what exactly did I do wrong? (O_o)

Well, I found out from Natalie, our local expert, that Garlic should be planted in the Fall to harvest NEXT Fall. So it has a whole year of growth underground. Wow, so all the garlic that are coming up now are ready for being in the ground next year :) ! HA! I totally am way better at this that I thought! In fact, I could maybe say I MEANT to do it. ::Evil cackle::

This actually makes me want to plant even more garlic, because now is the season to do the planting. That, and any of my friends will tell you I LOVE garlic. I love to eat it on pizza, with stir fry, roasted, and sometimes even raw with food (learned that from my Albanian neighbors).
This is much to the dismay of my friend who have to be around me after I've been eating a whole head of garlic.

Some other good news: I found the digital camera, and I can soon add photos to this bloginess!
In true digital camera fashion, I found it had drained the batteries that were in it.

Here's also a photo of the front of the house from Spring. We've since painted the white/primer parts a tan color, but the shape of the front yard is pretty much the same. This will be one of a few "before" photos used before the front yard is transformed by my friend Pam from four seasons, who has encouraged me over and over not to give up on the dream of edible landscaping.

Here's a shameless plug for such a sweetheart of a person!
http://www.4seasonslandscapeanddesign.com/