Sometimes you don't eat ground cherries for 10 years...

 The pandemic definitely got us to finally pay attention to what little land we have and start gardening. The extent of our gardening before this was to allow the neighbors raspberries to expand into our yard by clearing weeds around there so they could "walk" into our side and picking said raspberries when they were ripe. Luckily, our neighbors to both sides have raspberries that have expanded into our yard. And the neighbor behind us gave me a raspberry cane years ago that I also planted and has since created it's own patch of raspberries also. So basically, we have a lot of raspberries and a plum tree that before these couple of years, would sometimes give plums, and sometimes not. 

Well in 2020 we ordered seeds, made a plan of sorts and decided to start a permaculture food forest in the very little land we have. This meant getting rid of the grass (thought it was mostly weeds at this point haha) by sheet mulching (covering in cardboard and then a thick layer of mulch or wood chips to smother the grass) and then trying to plant a garden. 

Before I write too much, I'll expand on that later in other posts. I'll just say for now that we love trying new produce. Any fruits or vegetables we either haven't tried or new varieties of familiar produce that we've never tried. So back in Milwaukee, we tried for the first time a fruit called "Ground Cherries" at a farmer's market. They are like tiny (size of a dime) sweet and tart yellow tomatillos. 

They were so good! 3 year old Sophia loved them back in Milwaukee, and so did I. And we had not tried them again since then until last summer when they started fruiting! And so we grew them again this year, and it's one of the highlights of the garden for me. I absolutely love these little fruits. But they're not available in supermarkets or stores. So we hadn't seen them in 10 years. 

Cute little yellow flowers with purple streaks in the center

Little "easter eggs" to collect every day!

You harvest them when they drop. And they start dropping in july, and don't stop until like October. Every day, cute little gifts to collect under the plants. 

And they're so easy to grow. Our soil isn't super fertile (yet). And these little plants keep on doing well and giving fruit for months on end. It's great! 

Ah, and lastly, this is what Paw Paws look like inside:

(The fruit that we're going to plant that Geli wrote about in her blog)