Winter Wonderland Garden Update

First snowfall yesterday! Today, the yard looks like a winter wonderland, in delightful contrast with the lush and flowering indoor garden. Here are some photos to cheer you up on a chilly day. Well, it’s chilly here, anyway! A perfect day for vegan aronia-quinoa-cacao scone biscuits:

 

Flowering geraniums, a budding Christmas cactus, peppermint, a living palm screen, lettuce microgreens, aloe and jade in the southern window of our house:

 

The blue house offers a less sunny southern window for oregano, thyme, parsley, chives, aloe and a tree collard cutting, while Mr. Meyer Lemon seems to prefer my sunny southern office window, along with jade and snake plant companions. The office is still not finished, but at least the plants and crystals are happy!

Tonight we’re making a stir-fry and topping it with these homegrown Chinese artichokes, affectionately known by me as “the little dudes,” which I harvested on Friday alongside these self-sown carrots. Gotta love self-sown carrots! I harvested a few more before the snow arrived.

Chinese artichokes are related to mint and will hopefully be a perennial if I harvested them right. The little dudes grow from the roots, and they taste a lot like water chestnuts. You can eat them raw, as I did yesterday, and we think they’ll make a fun topping to a mixed veggie stir-fry. They required zero work, just a contained plot and some water, until harvest, so I hope the remaining roots prove vigorous enough to grow again next spring.