Today was a beautiful day . . . which started with my son announcing in my bedroom door that boy Chris and Josie had picked blackberries and were making pancakes with homeade blackberry syrup. With hot coffee and sweet berries on the cakes, I woke to see that Crissy already had her painting overalls on and had begun organizing her paintings in the garage studio. Over breakfast we discussed whether we should hike to the top of a mountain or stick around the house. Finally we decided to first do some shamanic journeys while Josie and Chris took a bike ride, and then garden. We took off to visit the most beautiful herb farm I've ever seen and bought dozens of edible beauties for half price! Josie above decided to help plant some geraniums. Galen chose some purple sage to plant, because sage is his middle name and he loves purple.

Also in the backyard are two fig trees which produce AMAZING tasty fruit!

No matter how long we stand picking black berries, there are so many blackberries bushes outside our house that it would take days and days to pick them all. I call it the endlessly abundant berry patch.

Here's our pear tree, and down the way is an apple tree . . .

We call this sweet plant our 'peanut butter tree' because when you squish the leaves they smell like peanut butter.

Beside our door are herbs like lemon balm, lavender, parsley, cilantro, rosemary and more.

We planted today, several kinds of basal, sage, camemile, curry, sweet grass, lemon grass, cilantro, sorrow, skull cap, mugwort, lungwort, a tea tree, greek tea . . . and about twenty more edibles not named! Also here are carrots, potatos, tomatos, peppers, oregano, lettuce and so much more. This is URBAN AGRICULTURE in our city backyard!

This shows our grape plants with manure soil in the box there.

All around besides the edibles are flowers, such as these on our garage.

This fire pit will soon have a cob bread oven beside it! We plan to make this ourselves soon.

This is the front yard with multiple kinds of roses and other flowers . . .

Amber is checking out the three hens and one rooster . . . his name is ICE CUBE lol. Next to them is the compost pile.

Here are some vehicles and above this on the porch roof are more pots for planting.

. . . A bay tree and some awesome smelling flowering plants.

This side yard is full of flowers.

Our shady artichoke corner of the garden . . .  and we are getting an oil press to make tea tree and lavendar oils. We are going to learn how to make tinctures of things like skull cap- and just learn all we can about these amazing edibles. Also will plug some stumps with mushrooms next week.

Boy Chris cooked us the most incredible authentic Indian dinner with tofu bits and mushroom curry on brown rice. It was heaven . . . then out again to the garden with our hard ciders and shovels. This weekend has been heavenly- and our small sweet city in the valley here in Oregon feels like a garden of eden. In fact it was named one of the top five cities to live in by the Outdoor magazine. I know it will rain for months and months starting in the fall . . . but with vitamin D suppliments and trips somewhere away for sunshine now and then, we'll enjoy our cozy home, and this garden all winter.

I'm still waiting for our belongings to appear . . . as we sleep on make shift mats and borrow things we need (sigh)!

I wanted to share my day- and the joy of Urban-Ag at it's best!

Fawn