May 21, 2016. My mom planted this bush, who knows when. Dad has a thing about weeds, and a spray can full of noxious chemicals. It’s likely when the peonies started coming back in the spring he took them for weeds. For whatever reason, when I took over that part of the garden I took […]
Cemetery Symbolism: The Meaning of Memento Mori and a Puritan reminder of your mortality
“Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” William Shakespeare, Macbeth “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou […]
Daylillies open for the first time this spring in the witch’s garden
May 19, 2016. It’s said that Daylillies are night scented, but so far I’ve seen no evidence of that. They’re tucked in below a butterfly bush and bordered by Lambs Ear and Poison Ivy. I’m in the process of yanking out all of the later. I’ll keep one because I do grow poisons after all. […]
Valerian displays its constellation with promise of a good night’s sleep come harvest
May 19, 2016 A lot of people take Valerian, usually as a tea made from the roots. This is the first year I’ve tried growing it on my own, and no sooner than I got it in the ground it began to bloom. It’s a lovely herb, and since it’s a perennial, I picked up […]
Penstemon digitalis, an American foxgloves blooms and spreads in the witch’s garden
Penstemon digitalis, a Foxglove native to the eastern and western United States and Canada turns out to be quite adept at spreading itself. It’s a lovely, though slightly more delicate version of Foxglove, with striking redding foliage. I noticed it’s spreading from the one I planted last year, to four or five new plants this […]
Fairy thimbles harbor a deadly poison in the witch’s garden
I love Foxglove. They used to be known as Fairy Thimbles. I was at a nursery the other day and they had a section for fairy gardens. The packaging was too neat, too professional and of course, there were no plants whatsoever associated with fairies. But there were cute little houses and decorations to scatter […]
Pansies add another shade of black to the witch’s garden
Gardens are loved for their color. Witches are fond of their blacks. So we have to work in some black in here someplace. I ran across these Black Pansies at our local nursery this year, and filled half the containers out there on the table with them. Like a lot of black plants, Black Hollyhocks […]
An exquisite little poison blooms early in the witch’s garden
Belladonna was one of the first witch plants I set out in my garden. I had no luck getting it started from seeds, and so ordered three plants. Two came back the first year, I ordered two more. This year only one came back, and I nearly pulled it up, thinking it was poke weed. […]
