outside

There's a funny thing about the tokyo bekana. When I cut leaves the other day for a stir-fry with rice, noticed one plant (left here) is different. It's leaves are slightly darker green, have small prickly hairs, thinner midribs, and are lobed on the lower stem. More characteristic of turnips. And guess what, I read that tokyo bekana readily crosses with turnip. So I bet the seed I bought, got unintentionally crossed!

It's still edible in the same manner, just not as crisp and sweet. I pulled that one tokyo/turnip plant, and reseeded a half dozen tokyo bekana- one in that spot, the rest between some collards. Overhead- that's the bed of collards and other greens on the far right. Bed in center has slo-bolt lettuce surrounding the blue collard plant gone to seed (I've been cutting off new flowers that form now, as I want it to put all its energy into making nice seed and don't need more than it's already producing!), leaf beet chard on one side, young swiss chard on the other. Bed on the far left is the perennial herbs with- top to bottom left to right: green onions, lemon balm, sage, sorrel, nepitella, sculpit, winter savory and lavender (not visible, leaves from the clematis on the deck post obscure it)

Also a picture taken from the deck- view of one of the perennial beds in the yard. Either side of the tree my pannicle hydrangeas, right against the trunk the bunches of yellow salvia, front of that several nice variegated hostas. The aguja is filling in very well, and on the outskirts against the lawn, area where I removed grass between tree roots is (hopefully) my new permanent borage bed.

I finally got around to adding leaf mulch to that, so it looks somewhat tidier.