I am Aunt Debbi & I Want Your Trash

Okay, my neighbors think I am crazy. I have been stealing their bags of leaves for years. I have requested their tea bags, eggshells, fruit and vegetable peels, and such. My mom saves all her compostables (not a word, but it should be) in the freezer for me. I pick them up ever few weeks when we are over for a visit.

The back door neighbors gave me their bags of leaves last fall. These nice folks just lined them up along my back fence. It has been raining a lot the last week or two so all the neighborhood lawns are overgrown. My nice neighbors who give me leaves offered their grass clippings. I took them all. He was going to bag them for me. No need, just dump them straight over the fence into the pile. See how the compost pile is overflowing. Those grass clippings are getting nice and hot. I wonder how many other neighbors I can talk out of their trash.

Shopping in My Own Backyard

The other night I made jambalaya. I had the shrimp, chicken, good sausage, rice, and stewed tomatoes bought from the store. Of course I used my homemade hot sauce. For the veggies, I was able to pick peppers, parsley, garlic, and Swiss chard right out of the garden. It felt a little like a natural shopping trip. Everything was awesome, fresh and tasted wonderful.

Shhh...Don't tell about them Swiss chard. I sneak it into spaghetti sauce, jambalaya, and chili. No one has ever caught me. We grow this plant year round and it is really nutritious. It has vitamins A, C, E, and K as well as a lot of minerals. It is also a cut and come again crop. We just cut off the leaves we need for that days meals and the plant grows back. Remember how big they got last spring?

About the onions. My bulb onions are long gone. I harvest them in mid spring. I have not been able to grow enough to last more than a few months. I will try to grow more this year. Anyway, the onions I use right now are oriental bunching onions. They grow in clumps and you just pull up what you need to use for the day. Another cut and come again plant. The tops are excellent as green onions. The bulbs are rather small, but there are so many of them it does not matter.

I usually only plant half of the garden for fall. Not this year. This year the whole garden will be in onions, broccoli, cabbages, beets, collards, lettuce, and carrots. Not going to waste a single inch. We should be shopping in the backyard all winter.