Bittersweet nightshade flowers
Bittersweet continues strangling and climbing its neighbours. Purple petals with saffron noses cover the darkly veined vines and leaves. Here and there a green devil’s tomato can be found waiting for sunlight to make it blush red.
Black Henbane Flowers
The five henbanes grow taller and taller producing new delicate flowers every day. Butter yellow pollen is dusted across the sticky haired leaves by the dances of bees and wasps. I collect the dead flower heads which turn from yellow with burgundy veins to white with blue veins once dry –the yellows and reds of the sun evaporated.
What is that hiding under the large soft leaves of the clary sage? It’s a black nightshade stowaway far from its pot and where it was planted. I look under a few more leaves and find another. I think its trying to remind me it does as it pleases and grows where it chooses… whether you planted it or not. It’s been stalking me for years. At first uninvited and then welcomed once I convinced it not hide among my peppers and potatoes.
I’m still waiting and hoping for the black nightshades and the belladonna to bloom so I can have a harvest of berries and seeds.
I brought home a few new additions to the garden family. They were so lovely and fragrant I just couldn’t leave them at the garden centre all alone. So home with me came the rue (I ♥ rue!), yerba buena (a native herb kinda like a spearmint vine), and a gorgeous “strawberry seduction” yarrow. Isn’t the yarrow gorgeous? It smells worse than the henbane, but it’s lovely to look at and keeps away some unwanted insects. The flowers look a bit pink in the sunlight, but otherwise they look like blood and that makes this witch very happy.
