Seeds from the neighborhood

Robin and I were walking the dogs the other afternoon when we passed Mr. Hiers' house. We saw him working in his vegetable garden and I thought I would take this opportunity to go talk to him. I say "garden", but he has closer to a field of vegetables in his back yard. The lots on our street are a third of an acre and the placement of his house leaves probably close to half of that available to farm in the back yard. I always think I'm doing well with my garden until I see his. Although I did feel that way this time too, I'm proud of what I've done and wouldn't trade it for anything.

We spent some time looking at what he had planted and swapped stories about what we had planted and harvested, etc. He showed me his fruit trees and his grapevines and then we went into the garage. He opened up a cabinet with all the seeds he has saved over the years. He had some he had collected himself, and others he had bought at the Cross Seed auction. He started pulling jars, medicine bottles and paper bags full of seed off the shelves and handing them to me. By the time he was finished, I could hardly carry everything home - that includes the bag of squash too.

The containers of seeds have been sitting on the desk for the past week, waiting for me to have time to plant some and I finally did that today. I planted whole seed flats of each type of seed he gave me:

Butter beans
Bush Lima Bean
Brandywine Tomato
Beefsteak Tomato

Actually, I didn't plant the vegetables yet, but I did plant the flowers.

Gloriosa Daisy Yellow
Hibiscus "Dinner Plate"
Hibiscus "Poinsettia"

Those are his descriptions on the containers of flower seeds. When I opened the bag of gloriosa daisies, there was another bag with more seeds. They were different than the seeds in the original bag, so I planted those as well. I've labeled them separately on Myfolia.com and on the bags themselves so I'll know in the future.