Identity Theft

There's a little diner that sits on the corner of a large intersection in the Valley where I grew up. As a 19 year old, my timing was both unusual and tragic and so I wound up spending much of my early 20's at this diner drinking cup after cup of mediocre coffee with my very favorite people during the late night/early morning hours. A little She Talks to Angels, a little of Joni Mitchell's California and a lingering "pirate's smile" doesn't just make a hippie with dark eyeliner, it also makes this Urban Farm Girl.

When I'm not trying to be the person that I would like to be (sorry grandma, no matter how hard I try I'm not even close to capturing your grace, courage or strength), I'm trying to distance myself from my man-made hurricane of fiery chaos and destruction that is the kind of certifiable lunacy that earns the Hero Boyfriend a nomination for sainthood for his unconditional support. It's not cute or pretty. It doesn't happen often but, when it does, it looks like I've been hijacked by sweatpants wearing a bad attitude. If anything, it's Jeckyll and Hyde-y. And so therein lies my distaste and distrust for multiple moniker vegetation. My envy of people who are more like tomatoes and less like the multiple alias/personality folks like myself. Some days I'm coriander and other days I'm cilantro. You can't have one without the other, but shoot, why can't I just be one? What Would Gwyneth Do?

I thought it was due to my newbie status as a farmer, but, as I mentioned in my last post, I just couldn't tell if one of my winter crops was a broccoli or cabbage plant. Well, upon further research I learned that my confusion may have something to do with the fact that broccoli evolved from a wild cabbage plant in Europe. AND its very name comes from the Italian plural of broccolo which refers to "the flowering top of a cabbage." Please, don't even get me started on the cauliflower plants I think I'm growing. Did you know that purple cauliflower is actually a type of broccoli sold in southern Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom?

So broccoli evolved from cabbage and sometimes, to some people, it's cauliflower. Really? This reeks of coriander/cilantro all over again...




I'm convinced these are all broccoli and/or cauliflower plants now. Also, check out the broccoli/cauliflower leaves on the left that have been terrorized by some garden critters. Sad.










In case you're like me and wondering where the broccoli/cauliflower is going to grow from or out of, I've taken a picture of the very spot. Right there, in the middle of the leafy green plant is where I place my hopes for a fruitful harvest.







Lettuce news:




The arugula has been unattended to and so it has become this...
















Now we have flowering arugula plants in the backyard and the sidewalk. Since we're still recovering from an economic downturn, I will be at work stomping and collecting arugula seeds in a few months as an act of supporting my own austerity measure.















Until then, there's still a little patch of mixed greens to get us through our days on the icy southern California tundra.







If you're reading this and would like some arugula seeds harvested from the blog garden, send me a note and I'll happily send you some seeds!