Ah, guerrilla gardening. Not gorilla, the animal, but planting and growing in a surprising and sneaky manner. Guerrilla gardening takes a name from guerrilla warfare, also surprising and sneaky.

I was pulling out weeds, mostly burdock, when I yanked on one that wouldn’t come out from the ground next to a walkway board.

It’s not burdock.

Burdock? Nope. Kale? Nope. Either way, I did not plant anything here. The board is old and rotting, so if I’d dropped a random seed in it, something may have come up. But this? This is more than an accidentally dropped seed.

Surprise! It’s turnips.

I definitely didn’t plant turnips here. I blame the squirrels or chipmunks, those tricky little furballs. Some tiny critter moved seeds or ate seeds and pooped them into this cozy little spot. And they grew. Grew and grew and grew.

I enlisted Chuck’s help with a crowbar and harvested the surprising batch of turnips. They became part of a stew later on.

Despite the weeds taking over most of the garden (courtesy of our late June early July vacation), we didn’t get to harvest much this season. But turnips? Turnips are tough. I pulled up quite a few, including the random guerrilla-planted turnips under the board.