My Garden Transformation

When I was younger I begged my parents to let me have a flower garden all for my own. Long story short, it went to heck after the first year. For one thing, I wasn't taking care of the garden at all after the first year. For another thing, I had a friend give me some plants from her garden. one of those plants is called Leafy spurge.

This is what it looks like

 This is what it can do.

So if you ever see it in your garden, remember this motto: PURGE THE SPURGE!

Of course when I planted it in my garden I had no idea it is one of the most noxious weeds in the country.

After about 3 years of not working on it at all, I decided that I needed to start completely over. Rather than try and weed out all the individual plants, I needed to rip everything out and start afresh. So I did.

Violet Jelly

Jelly made out of flowers? Yes, you heard me right. A small purple flower can be used to make a delicious jelly:

We've had some lovely weather here in Minnesota the past few days, and the back field is full of violets.

They are one of my favorite springtime flowers.

My camera doesn't take very good closeups, so here is a picture I found on the Internet!
Click to go to their page

This is a Common Blue Violet, (you can view the Wikipedia page here) but every violet is edible.

I remembered reading once about how violets are edible and are used to make syrups and jellies, so I searched it up on the amazing Internet and found a recipe, that I revised a little after some trial and error.