Whiteley Creek Homestead

I have been making an intentional effort to use up what I have. Call it frugality, a challenge, making all things matter, or not wanting to run to the store… it's all that. Several days ago I had made a large pot of vegetable bean quinoa soup. Today, I was about to savour the last bite of soup when I noticed the lovely colors. So many colors in one little spoon. 

Irridescent purple cabbage, dark green glimmering collard greens, autumn orange sweet potato, deep red tomato chunks, and white curly cooked quinoa tendrils. My thoughts began to wander to my kitchen garden that is only yet a plan forming in my head and the rainbow of colors my heirloom plants shall produce. 

'Rainbow' Swiss chard (red, orange, purple, yellow, and white stalks and veins), 'painted pony' dry beans (brown and white), 'dwarf grey' sugar snap pea, golden beets (deep orange skin w/ bright yellow flesh), 'dragon' carrots (red-purple skin w/ yellow-orange flesh), 'old timey blue' collard greens (blue-green leaves w/ purple stems and veins), 'gulley's favorite' butterhead lettuce (dark green leaves w/ red tinge), watermelon radish (white skin w/ dark pink and white flesh), and 'long island cheese' pumpkin (buff colored) – shaped like Cinderella's coach. And, oh, the cutting garden flowers and flowering herbs. Borage with its clusters of blue star-shaped flowers… so easy to grow and lovely in bouquets, ferny cosmos, globe amaranth, 'benary's' giant zinnia, and sunflowers saluting the sun. Each night as my eyes close and the Seed Savers Exchange 2013 Catalog of Heirloom & Open-Pollinated Seeds falls upon my chest, I dream of the warming spring ground and the seeds that will sprout and poke through the rich soil.