I'm Sure They're Talking on Nextdoor

So it's summer again, or technically spring, I guess, but I prefer to simplify things and go with:

• cold = winter
• wet/green = spring
• hot = summer
• omg it's still hot just kill me now and also everything is dead = fall

Obviously there's a little room for overlap, and sometimes spring and winter flop back and forth, but my system makes a whole lot more sense than looking at the damn calendar and claiming that it's spring when it's supposed to be 100 F this week.

Wait, I was going somewhere with the spring/summer thing... Oh yeah. Anyhow, now that everything is growing, I feel the need to plant things around my property. Most of my garden is stuff that grows with little-to-no intervention and is either perennial or reseeds itself. Artichokes, chard, mint, blackberries... that's all stuff that takes care of itself. Some years I get tomatoes and for a while I had tomatillos that came up every year, but I think I smothered them the last time I mulched. But I like to try new things, especially in my ongoing war against the front lawn-weeds. Yet plants are expensive.

You know what's not expensive? Cuttings from other people's plants. (Obviously, this is only true if you don't get fined or shot or whatever. Your mileage may vary.) So my daily walks around the neighborhood have turned into long strolls wherein I size up everyone's landscaping and try to decide if that interesting plant a) is drought resistant, and b) will root from a cutting. Extra points if I can break off a piece from the sidewalk. My kitchen window houses a row of Ball jars with cuttings in water.

So yeah, that's what I've been doing lately. Now I just need to get a pair of scissors that will fit in my pocket and I can go cut a few twigs from a plant a few streets over...