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We planted lilies of the valley. We still get green onions. The onions are BIG.

I think a person planted the onions intentionally: someone who lived in this house before we did. They are strong and stealthy (the onions, not the gardener), the kind we call walking onions. When not harvested, they sprout a new bulb on the top. The bulb’s weight tips the onion stalk to the ground, and the bulb begins to grow a new onion plant. And the cycle goes on. Not that I complain; they’re delicious, fresh, and free!

Guerrilla gardening may have begun in the late sixties or early seventies as part of the Flower Power movement. Today it seems like part of a green movement, a desire to beautify vacant lots or trashy looking property. Mother Nature Network covered the Guerrilla Gardening movement in London, where gardeners sneak out with their seeds and trowels under cover of darkness for fear of discovery. Their motto is “Fight the Filth with Forks and Flowers.” Their weapons? Spades and seed bombs.

I have guerrilla gardeners around my neighborhood, too. Here’s the evidence. This flower was inside the barrier, not outside, when I planted the bulb. I’m sure of it. Did the London brigade sneak into my yard?

Then there’s the lone tulip in the daylilies. I didn’t plant it there. Not a chance. But a stealthy gardener with a fascinating accent didn’t plant this. No one from across the Big Pond (not Lake Michigan, you dolt, the Atlantic) came over to move my bulbs.

Yep. The evidence is circumstantial, but it’s enough to convict.

The camouflage can’t fool me. That’s no gorilla hiding in the leaves. It’s our Guerrilla Bulb Transplanting Squirrel!

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Yes, it’s asparagus! It’s growing!

No, we can’t pick it this year. We need to wait one more year – perhaps two – to allow it to strengthen and establish itself. Delayed gratification can be tough; for now, I’ll buy our asparagus at the farmers’ market. But I can still be excited!

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>Spring means chores. Somehow, I don’t mind the extra work that comes with the melting of the snow and the warming of the temperatures. One of the first: I need to cut back or pull out the dead mint surrounding the tulips and other pretty spring blooms. Put simply, it’s time to get rid of the brown and make room for the green.

In the garden, the green onions are coming back. The parsley is returning; I didn’t even know parsley was a perennial. Is it? Maybe it reseeded itself. The chives are poking their slim green head above the ground, too. But the asparagus, the new plants I put in last year? Gone. No sign of them. Sigh. Maybe they didn’t have enough sun; maybe I bought a bad batch. I’ll try again in a new location and see what happens. It’s a bit discouraging when asparagus takes 2-3 years to develop. Losing a year in the process – well, there’s always the Farmers’ Market!

>The growing season is short in my Wisconsin climate zone. I don’t dare put in tomato or pepper plants until late May, usually Memorial Day. At the end of the growing season, when die-hard locavore gardeners are canning their salsa and preserving their heirloom seeds, I’m starting a new school year. I’ve used that timeline as an excuse to plant only mass-produced garden center seedlings for years. This year, I’m branching out.

Thanks to gifts from Hometown Seeds and City Slipper (@CitySlipper on Twitter, blogging at Small Kitchen Garden), I’m starting a few heirloom varieties from scratch.

Read the whole post at Green Spot-On!

>Our new school wellness coordinator is my kind of person: she’s a green fiend. One of her newsletter recommendations has been a New Food of the Month. She suggests a fresh food that might be new to some, tells us why it’s good for us, and gives a little more information about it. This month’s fabulous food was something that’s poking its little green leaves and little red stems above the ground next to my garage: You guessed it! Rhubarb!!

To read the rest of this post, go to Green Spot On, my home away from home on Mondays.

>It’s the end of March in Wisconsin. That means…well, it can mean anything. For a gardener, it means Don’t Get Too Eager; We Could Still get Snow!” I can get started thinking about it – planning, not planting.

I ordered plants from my local environmental charter school. I’ll pick up those tomato and pepper and herb plants on Mothers’ Day.

I’ve heard of another unique source of plants. It’s called Free Plants by Mail, and it’s an organization that finds new homes for overstocks and extras: plants grown for nurseries and greenhouses and then not needed. Heard of animal rescues? This sounds like a plant rescue to me. It sounds rather tempting, too. Proceeds go to the Nature Conservancy.

For more on my own garden planning, go to Green Spot On, where I guest post most Mondays.