Sketch/ watercolour of my last-spring Montreal porch garden.

Can you spot it?

The first strawberry blush! This morning it was still all white, though I thought I saw a slight tinge of pink...and over the course of the day, that blush deepened! So excited for these strawberries.

I really love spending time each day just looking closely at the plants. They are so beautiful and the ways that they all develop and grow are pretty magical. Here are some close looks at some little big events going on in the garden right now.

Little cucumber developing! And many more blossoms opening and closing in overlapping succession as the days go by.

Say what! Yes. There was a maple key lying on the surface of the soil in the little pot, and I suppose with the sun and the rain this guy was able to germinate! Unbeknownst to me, that is, until I saw it a few days ago!

Here it is today, along with a little Nasturtium that I was able to sprout from seed.

And another little maple invader! I'm amazed that these little trees were able to grow simply by lying on soil and taking in some water and sun. That boosts our tree count up by two! Going to have to get some more soil and pots, I think.

Morning glories reaching and twining....I keep wondering which of these little buds/ ends might be flowers. We haven't had the first flower yet, but I'm sure some morning soon we'll walk out and it'll be there, just like how that first strawberry pink snuck up outta nowhere!

Bring on Porch Salads!

I've now had two salads harvested from our little garden!! What we have available for the pickin' right now is some lettuce, some arugula and a selection of 9 herbs...which is quite a bounty if you ask me!

I really enjoyed adding a bunch of fresh herbs to my salad mix: I took some basil, some oregano, chives and parsely along with the lettuce and arugula. The second time I tried adding some mint in there, and it was okay...I think one wants to be more reserved with mint though, depending on what else is in the salad.

For both I put half a tomato, half an avocado, a chopped up green onion and some goat cheese on top. Some pumpkin seeds, fresh pepper, dashes of both olive oil and balsamic vinegar...Heavenly! The tastiest salad mix I've had. And how pleasing to know it all came from our little porch.