The garden abundance fosters immense creativity with salads. I wander about the garden and gather just enough for a lunch salad for me or a dinner salad of us.

The winter garden is my favorite—the variety of greens, the brassicas, the root vegetables; cool weather, rain, fewer weeds and pests.. By comparison, my summer garden seems pedestrian and a little boring: tomatoes, summer and winter squash, eggplant, peppers, corn, cukes and beans. Add to that lots of irrigation, bugs, weeds and fog.

I sheared the arugula before leaving for a few days. It’s beyond what some of my garden consumers like but I have one neighbor who will take arugula at any stage.

She also likes to saute the peppery mustard greens so I headed them back in their container. They grow too vigorously when planted with the other greens.

I snatched a few radishes from the garden before they split or became too large.

I was dashing to the house with the Romanescos and the daffodils caught my eye. Why not put them together for a photo? I took them to my sister’s and we made Lemony Romanesco with Pine Nuts. See my post on Romanesco from last week.

Last week I made kumquat marmalade and did a blog post on Kumquats and Marmalade.

And here’s one of several garden gift trays I shared with neighbors. To see what other garden bloggers are harvesting head over to Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.