Little Blue-Purple Flowers

Three nice little blooms to show you today, although none is native to this area.

The first was near the Lincoln River last week. I'm pretty sure this is Water Mint Mentha aquatica. If so, it probably escaped from someone's garden, and it has not been recorded in Mason County before. I have a request in to check the ID. Not native to the US.

Next up is the Liriope I bought at the Garden Club plant sale last fall. Sadly, I missed this year's sale. There are two choices of species, but now that it's blooming, I'm pretty sure its Liriope muscari. It is native to Asia and is considered invasive. I guess I'll need to watch to see if it starts to get out of control in the garden. Just two little stalks of flowers this year. I don't mind having ornamental garden plants that aren't native as long as they don't escape and become a problem. (That has happened to me once and it's fairly embarrassing. Maybe I'll tell you sometime.)

Finally, I consider this a semi-success, although it's really native west of here- more in Minnesota. I think it came in as a hitchhiker in something Betsy gave me because she says she has some in her garden.

This is the plant that had a bud earlier this year, and then the wind broke the stem. But it came back and has two tiny blossoms. I'd really like to get this to go to seed and then move it to a different location. It's Anise Hyssop, Agastache foeniculum. Most plants with "foeniculum" in the name are aromatic, and this smells strongly of anise/licorice.

Had another pretty good work day today. Also made bread. It came out mediocre- more like my usual bread-making attempts. But I'll eat it.

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Tour de Basil

 Time to make my salad dressing again. Friend Margaret dug up a whole basil plant that was flowering and sent it home with me. She says she's done all she can possibly do with basil for one season. Today, I picked off all the leaves that were still good and froze some for future batches of dressing.

Meanwhile, let's talk about the basil plant, Ocimum basilicum. I'd never really thought about where it fits taxonamically. Would you belive it's a mint? It has pretty white flowers (but that means the end of harvesting it for a herb. Some varieties are tender perennials, but Margaret says not these ones. She's tried.

There are several varieties of basil, and I don't know which this is, but here is a stem with whorls of seed pods forming below the budding stalk along the square stem. That's a big clue that it's a mint.

This stem has broken off and you can really see the shape of the pods although they aren't ripe yet, and that the stem has four sides.

Here's a stalk just starting to bud. I love the telescoped layers of baby leaves.

Now I'm practically high on basil from harvesting all the leaves!

In other news: no walking happened. I stared at the computer so long my eyeballs ache, but I got a lot done.

See Is it Easy Being Green?