I harvested my first green egg squash. It grew at sonic speed after the storm we had the night before. 
The rule at our home is the first squash of the season should be fried, but since a few years ago we avoid greasy foods, so our first squash are stir fried instead of deep fried.
I picked some chard, green onions, onion chives, garlic chives, sweet basil and rosemary to add to the stir-fry along with orange peppers that I froze last gardening season. The stir fry was delicious.
We grew everything in this stir fry, except for the olive oil that we used to stir fry the veggies. I think that’s awesome!
Now for the reveal from the teaser in my ‘Friday in Green‘ post.
We got carried away with buying herbs and had no choice but to make an herb garden.
My husband picked out the cute birdbath for the center of the herb garden. We think Mickey and Minnie Mouse are so adorable. My husband planted some celosia flowers to add color to the herb garden.
I figure by fall, if the weather acts right, the herb garden should be quite productive.
I figure most of the herbs won’t survive a winter, but we’ll wait and see.
You may have noticed that I have 3 rosemary plants; the one in the pot that I’ve been posting about for awhile and 2 plants in the herb garden.
My brother sent me a ‘Rosemary Madeline’ plant for my herb garden. It’s supposed to be hardy in our growing zone. I hope it survives the winter and grows well.
My husband also bought a rosemary to grow in the herb garb garden. I don’t know what it is other than rosemary. Like the rosemary that I bought, in the produce department, it didn’t have any other name or variety info on it’s plant stake. I’ve checked several garden centers around here and they all grow/sell rosemary but none label what specific variety it is.
I originally planted peppermint and chocolate mint in the herb garden, but after reading up on the mints and how invasive a plant they can be, I transplanted them into pots and keep them on my porch. By-the-way, the chocolate mint smells like a andes mint or a york peppermint patty. I haven’t tasted it yet though. 
You can tell from the photo that my sweet basil and cinnamon basil are growing well. My lemon basil is the pot on the far right, it isn’t growing as fast. I’ve replanted the lemon basil seeds at least 5 times and only a few plants have come up. I believe there is something wrong with the seeds like they’re old or something. However, if the plants I have growing now survive they’ll be just fine for being greenery on my back-porch and maybe for flavoring a food from time-to-time.
Except for the herbs in our stir-fry, I haven’t used most of the other varieties. However, I’m planning to look up some recipes to try them out. I hope I can stick to my plan and maybe I’ll discover some tasty recipes.
My Gnome garden has the nicest crop of volunteer tomato plants. The funny thing about these super healthy plants is that we dug-up and moved the soil. Filtered out roots and anything else we could see. We put down black plastic in the flower bed and then put the dirt back in it. Over time we set up the birdbath, rain-chain and gnomes. I then planted the flowers. After a while I went to weed the garden and found around a dozen tomato plants growing. I think it’s funny how they seem to be planted with some intention next to the flowers.
I realize that some folks would’ve just pulled them up and tossed them, but I can’t do it, I wasn’t raised that way. I was raised that a volunteer veggie/flower is a gift and should be tended too with as much, if not more, care as if you planted it yourself.
I suppose the golden egg squash bloom in the photo below could be folding in for the day or not opened totally, but I think there may be a difference in the varieties. I’ll keep an eye on them and see. 
My rosemary is growing beautifully in it’s pretty red container and protective netting. I’m surprised that it’s thriving even though I take it inside every evening.
In the upper right side of the photo you can see a healthy patch of corn and wonder why (as I do) that it hasn’t been feasted upon yet. It’s a decorative corn variety with different colors of kernels.
My husband thinks it’s the decorative corn variety itself that has deterred the pests so far. I think he may be right. But I also think the deer may be saving it for when they have they’re babies and need some extra nourishment for their nursing fawn.
Joys Of Creating 