The long empty house east of me just got demolished, then down came two HUGE paper mulberries plus a cherry laurel that have long sent invasive suckers into my yard. The east side of my yard has always been shady, just a question of degree......when I sprigged my gloomy center east bed with EcoFarm sweet potatoes, and planted two passion fruit seedlings on the fence I was betting on afternoon sun hopefully being sufficient. So to see it sunny for the first time EVER is a joy!

Some of us grow them each summer and my own "Filipino Mexican Tree Pepper" is cranking, so today I made my third batch of this African hot pepper paste I am loving on pita bread and atop home made falafels. This recipe differs quite a bit from the first two I used....I omitted the mint as I want that in the cooling cucumber-mint yogurt dip, plus I added a whole yellow onion to cut the heat and add volume as my peppers are MUCH MUCH hotter than those in the recipe. It came out WONDERFUL!

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Harissa

My Dad and his siblings grew up in Coconut Grove feasting on these from the tree in their yard. Today I picked my first ever ripe Scarlet Mombin (Spondias purpurea) fruits from that baby tree that Tanja Vidovic snagged for me at ECHO last year that is now easily 15 tall and 8 feet wide! The yellow flesh had EXCELLENT flavor that reminded me a lot of strawberry, the pit much smaller than I had imagined. Cuttings root EASILY for me so I'll take more to share plus to have spares for me as it is quite tropical and even here in south Tampa frost is possible. Woo hoo!

The house east of me, empty for the better part of four years, is being demolished as I type. And a few folks have expressed concern that whoever builds the new house ( a retiring carpenter and his wife I am told) might turn me in to code for my productive but messy and weird yard...we shall see. But years ago when a then-wealthy Vietnamese family built the giant yellow house across the street, I and others worried they might be code nightmare folks...but they were a delight, teaching me herbal remedies, giving me fruit from the Mustang Flea Market, and they loved my fresh eggs and veggies. He lost his salon nails fortune after the meltdown and walked on a 2.1 million dollar mortgage, stripped the house. Then a wealthy guy with a ranch in Texas and very nice home in Palma Ceia about half a mile north of me bought it "cheap", refurbished it and moved in...great neighbors! But they decided it was too much house for two people, sold it and kept the Tampa house. Then Don and Suri bought it as a retirement home after many years in Indiana....also very well off, sold all their northern properties. Wonderful neighbors who feed me, invite me to parties, came to my Wacky Hat Party 60th birthday party last year, and are "hippie-fying" their yard. All the lawn out back is now food gardens...very few ornamentals aside from a "Barfield White Climber" rose I gave her. They are now slowly phasing out lawn area out front and planting many mangos, avocados, papayas and last summer grew watermelons in the middle of the front lawn to create a food forest! She is from Thailand and is RELISHING what she can grow here. I "came out" all three times as I have much of my life when asked if I had a wife, and shared that I enjoy cannabis in the evening...no problem. Big lesson to me to not see "rich people" as stuffy anal meddlers!

My chickens are relishing the protein-rich seed plumes of my "Giant Green Callalloo" amaranth.

Experiment: for over a year the west bed was littered with about a dozen small tree pots filled with south Tampa's "sugar sand" from when I buried a 55 gallon Water Wise Container Garden for my jaboticaba. Two weeks ago I moved them about until evenly spaced, sprigged each with "EcoFarm" sweet potato, then filled a 9 gallon bucket with rain water and added dried chicken poop, fish emulsion, trace elements and let it steep. Today each pot got a good drenching of this "nutrient soup", with the rest and the dregs going to the jaboticaba. My hopes are two fold.....abundant sweet potatoes from each pot this fall and winter, and weed control this summer from the lush aggressive vines. I love young tender sweet potato leaves added to summer salads, cooked as a summer spinach substitute, and as a portion of home made kimchi.

Real problem with my east side yams this year after years of eating pleasure from there...they often have corky discolored areas inside, and no matter how I cook them there is a very unpleasant "squeaky" rubbery texture and an odd sweetish yet acrid taste. The chickens are eating fried yams often these days. An "African Yellow" yam in my south bed (where Muscovy ducks also lived for nearly a year) that for years gave me tons of delicious tubers to fry now also has an unpleasant taste and squeaky rubbery texture.....is Muscovy duck poop the culprit here and in the center east bed? I'd think it'd be great for plants. Just a coincidence? I looked into if my poor tasting yams could be diseased...seems very unlikely...only real theory at this point is a year of Muscovy duck poop in both beds. Next I will dig up and cook yams from parts of the yard where there have never been ducks. I've been growing the true yams since 2001....first time ever that I have had ANY problem.

This is my plant yesterday of a form of Cereus peruvianus that I got years ago from a neighbor some blocks away I met while fishing in a neighborhood lake. It sets fruits far more often than others I've seen, and the fruits can be huge and taste as good as any Dragon Fruit I've eaten...flavor is best if I wait until just after they have split. Pic of the fruit is from last year.

I'm bringing seeds for the free seeds tables, three types of seeds for Sarah, an Ever Bearing Mulberry for her and for Paul, home made probiotic hot sauce for Paul, and something spicy/garlicy for the potluck. Last I read there is very little hope for Citrus Greening, and even that is very much in the future, so I'll be curious what the speaker has to say.

http://www.rarefruit.org/

This is one of the "EcoFarm Replicating Onions" I got from Jon and Debbie Butts last fall...never dies back, multiplies heavily at the base, good flavor, now and then sends up small slender viviparous stalks that so far have yielded nothing. Much more petite than my strain of Allium fistulosum.

Okay this spring I wondered why after a dozen years here I'd suddenly have "dandelion" volunteers out front but concluded I must have been somehow very careless with seeds that Paul Zmoda had given me at the Tampa Rare Fruit Council meetings. But I was happy and moved them into a baby pool garden on my back patio I am growing "perennial okra" in where they THRIVED. Well....the emerging bloom spikes make clear that they are actually volunteers of chicory from the mail box bed from last year! I'll gladly eat them as they share that same wonderful bitter taste and are very nutritious. So far, no germination from the dandelion seeds from Paul or that were mailed to me from Indiana. Live and learn!

Kip Curtis told me at Tanja's that folks, like me, had been confused about the original Edible Peace Patch and the Faith House, both in St. Pete...from new links on FB I now see why I was confused anew...the new community garden forming near the old Wooden Nickel that I did a mini-consult for IS different from an established community garden elsewhere in Temple Terrace. But both are now under the auspices of Kip's new The Edible Education Project, as is the new one at Greco Middle School. I remember when years ago I gave a talk about my Kiddy Pool Gardens to what was to become the Seminole Heights Community Garden there were none in the area...so cool to see SO MUCH interest and activism in the area! Next I want to visit Will Carey's Sustainable Living Project across from Lowry Zoo and Jon and Natalia's Eden Project in Ybor.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/templeterracecommunitygarden/

It is only today that I'm realizing that what I'd thought were separate, disparate, admirable efforts in St. Pete and in Tampa are under one umbrella. I attended the fund raiser for Greco Middle School at Tanja Vidovic's, not actually realizing the scope of Kip Curtis's work...this link on FaceBook helped me to "get" it

http://edibleeducationproject.com/temple-terrace-school-farm-to-school.htm

Even though I've been enjoying raw pods, yesterday I enjoyed a skillet full cooked on high heat in coconut oil with sea salt and coarse back pepper. Each year I marvel how such a dwarf plant produces SO many pods that get SO long yet remain tender. Plus early each autumn my plants send out strong laterals that start a whole new wave of production!

The Black Racer seems to have moved into the bird feeder...when I came home from errands I heard a Cuban tree frog screaming and saw this. Poor frog..it fought valiantly for nearly ten minutes.

Here is a test of a few of those sturdy recycled rubber mats that Mary Jo gave me. For years a strip of carpet kept the path beneath my avocado tree nearly weed free, but THIS year weed grasses sprouted in the decayed mulches atop it. The texture strikes me as likely to let some water pass through. Next I do the back patio paths.

As I'd hoped, tossing chicken bones and a few handfuls of limestone chicken grit into my scavenged dinghy duckweed pond has caused an explosion of brown pond snails...daily I take out of the pond 3 submerged five gallon buckets that have great number of snails clinging to them and set them in the chicken path for the flock to feast on. They also relish the hot water cabomba aquatic plants I toss into the path, plus the duckweed I easily scoop out with a colander.

This may well be the best batch of hot sauce I've ever made, and the first one ever that I pureed fermented garden veggies into after it cooled.It is HOT!!!! yet has a nice savory flavor atop the sweet back note provided by the Raja Puri bananas and sweet potatoes. I made a BIG batch, I should be set a long time, will give a jar to hot pepper god Allen Boatman who years ago taught me the concept of basing hot sauces on sweet fruits. This batch came out better than I'd hoped for....great texture and balance of the varying flavor elements. I'll enjoy seeing how the flavor evolves over the months as it ferments in the fridge.

That black racer snake just climbed straight up my front office window, somehow bridged the gap to the bird feeder, went inside, out came a LOT of Cuban tree frogs, it came back out, TRIED to get a frog on my window but missed and fell, then grabbed the back leg of the female half of the mating couple I'd just shot a pic of...they are making horrible sounds as it eats them.

Bugs and fungi can be rampant in summer, so here's an article from my old St. Pete Times gardening column....I got SO much positive feed back for years from this one! Cheap AND effective!

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/03/20/Homes/Wash_away_your_garden.shtml