Garden Surprises

Jules and Issy are so nice to me, and one afternoon they surprised me with a packet of seeds to plant a North American wildflower garden. I was really excited about it, so I turned over the soil, forked in a load of compost from our bin, raked in the seeds, and then left on vacation for six weeks. When I came back, the wildflower garden looked like this:

Can you see what's going on down front? Yes friends, that's a butternut squash vine, alongside a bunch of hearty tomato plants. Part of the North American wildflower garden? No. Undigested seeds from our compost bin. And look at what we have here:

A tiny little tomato.

So I started to look around the garden, and found a whole bunch of little surprises. A lobelia plant that popped up from last year's seeds, my little oregano plant that came back from the dead after a serious pruning, some little wild violets (yes, there are flower buds!) growing underneath my peonies, and some delicious-looking carrots really coming on in the pots.

That's not really a surprise, because I put them there, but it is surprising to have a harvest!