04/30/2023 garlic scapes and feral hog fire-cooked ribs

Garlic scapes are the flower buds before they open. Here they are yesterday before I harvested them this morning. Harvesting them is supposed to make the garlic cloves turn out better as the energy doesn’t go all into the flowers. Last year we left the flowers.
The Chef had a hankering to cook over fire. Here he adjusts a makeshift grill over the flames. An aluminum foil packet of potatoes is near his feet. Later he did the feral hog ribs over the fire too but finished a few of them off in the oven to ensure more even temperature for safety and convenience.
The meal. The Chef topped his ribs with head country barbecue sauce. Potatoes (lower part of plate) came out perfect in spite of the packet seeming to catch on fire at some point. The garlic scapes were sautéed with onions and already cooked beans (upper left). I think we all agreed potatoes were good, scapes need something different, and ribs should have been slow cooked instead to be less tough.

03/22/2023 nighttime-only cat! babies!!! And dinner!

Briar helpfully alerted me to a potential friend carefully crossing the back fence today! What a magnificent neighbor.
Turns out a few peach flowers survived.
The ones with dropped petals are quite striking with pale tips over maroon backgrounds!
I believe this is the annual (?) Cardamine sp from nearby seeded into the prickly pear planter.
Abby has kindly identified this as a human-introduced species Armeria serpyllifolia, thyme-leaved sandwort. It isn’t from North American originally but doesn’t seem to dramatically disturb the landscape.
This one may be an introduced chickweed. But a fuzzy one, not Stellaria media.
More baby inland sea oat seedlings in a second pot!my
Multiple baby native Rosa sp from Fannin Co TX. Thanks Mom!
This seems big enough to be the persimmon I actually planted??
Seedlings in false gaura pot, but not sure they look right.
Oklahoma penstemon given to me by a kind fellow Norman citizen!
Maybe smartweed amongst the Chenopodium. We shall see.
A Datura maybe?? The label fell out of this pot. Anybody recognize this seed?
I am informed the mustard leaf garnish is from garden and that the soup contains poblanos from last year from the freezer.