She saw yew and gasped out loud*.

Yew are really not much of a showstopper. Yew go unnoticed and fade into the backdrop. Yew are a dark green shrub and work in silence. Yew make the bones of the exterior space. Yew are the foundation, a foil to contain the seasonal sparklers. Your low-key profile and upright stature elevates the Garden space.

I used yew. Yew made an ugly chainlink fence disappear behind a wall of soft green needles.

*Wink to DS in Toronto on August 5, 2017

The datura when in bloom, is remarkable as a trumpet flower and it possesses an incredible night fragrance.  The seeds have been used for shamanistic rituals from ancient times to today as a path to…yes…Enlightenment!  But be forewarned.  It does indeed offer hallucinogenic effects as well as dark visions, disorientation, amnesia, blurred vision, dry mouth, and incontinence…not so very sexy.

Another pastoral scene from Heart Lake Road that compelled me to slow down and make a digital record of the distinctive silhouette of a silo off in the distance, a farm and a vintage barbed wire fence sequestering wild grasses.

New plants are constantly being added to The Garden Laboratory and it is a real challenge to remember all the names in plain English or in Latin. So, I started to stitch the newbies’ names onto swaths of linen that live in my kitchen as tea towels. This is a sample from 2014-best memory aid ever.

Now where did I leave those keys?