Plants fit for a potion

Several days ago at our local park, I was taking some photos and felt a theme coming together. Something about the light at that time of evening and the unique plant names I saw made me feel like I was in a fairytale. The kind of fairytale where a witch lives in a forest and goes out to collect plants for her brew.

So after noticing a few unique plant names, I started looking for the most witch's brew-worthy ones I could find. If you're ready to use a little bit of imagination, you can take a fairytale tour of our local park and gardens with me.

Care to take a trip into the woods? Legend has it that there's a garden of magical plants on the other side of this forest. People say there is a witch who lives near these woods and collects the magical plants nearby for her secret potions. Let's see if we can find some of those plants...

Deeper and deeper into the forest we go...

There is a wise old tree gnome in this enchanted forest. Can you see him?

The tree gnome says "Just walk straight down this path and you will make it to the forest's clearing. You'll know you're in the right place, because you'll find a magic walking stick. Take it with you and you'll be sure to find all the magical plants you're looking for." Sure enough, at the forest's clearing it appears that someone has left you a walking stick for your journey:

And here is the herb garden!

What will we find here?

Our first find is The Wooly Woundwort:

Yes, this is as soft as it looks!

Sneezewort:

Sneezewort has some cool, patterned leaves:

Soapwort:

I wanted to see the results of boiling the roots/leaves of this plant, so I looked up some videos. You can get some pretty good lather out of these flowers! I was surprised to also find tons of recipes and soapwort products for sale!

Sneezeweed (not to be confused with Sneezewort)

Rough Horsetail:

It looks a lot like bamboo and has these cool little pinecone things:

Snake's Head Fritillary:

I love the name of this one, but it turns out I didn't take a picture of it! I took photos of three other plants, not knowing which was the Snake's Head. Turns out, this is a spring flower. So that's why it wasn't there. I had to look up Snake's Head Fritillary to see what it actually looks like. It's beautiful:

The Snake's Head Fritillary - A Chequered History

I'm trying to figure out the "Snake's Head" name. Maybe the checks on the flowers look like a diamondback snake? Those snakes have check type shapes on them anyway.

Dark Vader Lungwort

How threatening does this sound? Even the "Lungwort" part. It's a cute little polka-dot plant, though.

Primal Scream Daylily:

Prince Tut Papyrus

This made me wonder if there's a King Tut Papyrus that's maybe larger. I took a look and yes there is: King Tut Papyrus And yeah, King Tut is pretty big. The King can grow 48-72 inches tall!

Bonefish Coleus:

These really do resemble fish skeletons, don't they?

Dark Towers Beardtongue:

Dark Towers is a foreboding name. It makes me think of Dark Shadows. And the "Beardtongue" part is pretty creepy too if you visualize it. I wonder where that came from? OK, I just looked that up and got a result that has nothing to do with this photo. Supposedly, some types of beardtongue have the appearance of a hairy tongue protruding from a mouth. Eww.

It has a fittingly Gothic look for a plant named "Dark Towers".

Last but not least, Elvis Lives:

Appropriately, it looks like "The King" of hostas. It's massive!

So here we have what sounds like the perfect ingredients for a Witch's brew:

Wooly Woundwort
Sneezewort
Soapwort
Sneezeweed
Rough Horsetail
Snake's Head Fritillary
Dark Vader Lungwort
Primal Scream Daylily
Prince Tut Papyrus
Bonefish Coleus
Dark Towers Beardtongue
Elvis Lives

Wow, what do you think would happen if those were all mixed together?

Well, you have the chance to find out because guess whose house we've come across!

I think she'll be nice enough to cook us up some of our little finds from the garden. The kind old witch says we picked the winning combination for a lucky brew!

Well, after finding all these mysterious plants, and sampling some brew, it's time to head home. There are some curious creatures to see on the way back, like this friendly fish.

He looks so happy because he spotted that clover. The purple fish ate the clover right after I took this picture.

Another cool creature in the park was the hummingbird moth. If you've ever seen one of these, you know why they have that name. You'll see a large buzzing flying critter coming toward a flower and swear it's a hummingbird, but on closer inspection it's an insect.

I've seen orangish ones like in the first photo, but I'd never seen one with yellow stripes before. Their wings move incredibly fast, so they're a challenge to photograph.

Well, here's your entrance back to the woods. Hope you enjoyed this garden tour!

P.S. ~ A little piece of trivia: The word "wort" in a plant's name comes from the old English word "wyrt". "Wyrt" means "plant". You can go back further with the word and read a list of "wort" plants here: List of Worts

Happy Earth Day!

I thought this would be the perfect time to share some of the little veggies I have coming up in my garden.

Lettuce

This first photo is a bit of a cheat because this lettuce managed to stay alive through the winter! It started really growing during the past few weeks. I planted some from seed this spring and here's what the little baby version looks like:

The seeds came in a mixed pack. They turn into a gourmet mix of lettuce and it's fun to see the different forms it comes in. This one is a little bit more red:

Mesculin (also Mesclun)

Mesculin is another type of fancy mixed lettuce. It will be fun to see what this lacy little one grows into.

Dwarf Kale

Isn't the dwarf kale cute? It looks like a little bow for now. These are called blue dwarf kale, so we'll see how blue they get. They're supposed to stay relatively small and not spread out too much. I was reading in a magazine recently that miniature kale is the hot new thing because it's ultra nutritious. It's like all the nutrients got compressed into a tiny little package. Funny enough, I read that in a fashion magazine on the "IN" page. So my garden will have the cool new accessory for spring.

Arugula

I love arugula so much! I bought these seeds last spring on ebay and I swear they have a germination rate of near 100%. It's nuts! Arugula everywhere!

This is one that has grown a little faster than the others.

Spinach

It looks like it's going to fly away! But look how different the mustard spinach is.

Mustard Spinach

I'm excited to be growing spinach this year and to have it coming along so well! I can't remember ever growing it in the past. I've read that the mustard spinach is pretty spicy!

Cilantro

You can never have enough of this, which is good because there are countless little sprouts out there. I think some decided to grow itself along with what I planted.

Dill

The dill was difficult to photograph because it's so tiny! No, that isn't an egg behind the little dill. It's one of the many rocks I put in my pots to discourage the chipmunks from digging around.

Sugar Snap Peas

It looks like a little bunny rabbit. This is a view showing more:

I think I have nine or ten coming up.

It's amazing how well all these little plants are doing during a Wisconsin "spring". It's snowing lightly right now. But they're hardy plants that can take it. We still have a long time until tomatoes and basil can be grown outside. I have started some basil seeds, though.

If any of you would like to get started with growing vegetables or herbs from seed, let me know. I can help you if you aren't used to gardening. It doesn't take much to get going. I bought most of my seeds at Dollar Tree for only 25 cents a package! A few packs were 20 cents at Big Lots. The dill is even in this Dollar Tree container I cut holes in the bottom of.

So growing seeds isn't that difficult, it doesn't have to be expensive, and it is really rewarding. Besides saving a ton of money, you'll find that the vegetables and herbs you grow taste a whole lot better than what you buy from the store. That and you'll feel more connected to nature and learn about many of the little critters in it as you take care of your plants.

If you are already into gardening, I'm open to a seed exchange!

Also on the topic of nature, I picked up a book at the library yesterday that I've been meaning to read for a while. Wicked Bugs! Look at this beautiful cover:

The awesome, intricate back cover:

To give you an idea of the illustrations:

I picked a bad customer for this example, but I guess the nice bugs probably didn't make it into the book. I think I remember reading about this book on some of your blogs a while back. I've only read the intro so far, but I can't wait to read the stories of bugs behaving badly!