Fall surprise

Yesterday when I made cauliflower soup, I made a trip to the big herb garden to snip some tarragon. I have three herb gardens now: the oldest (the existing) garden, where most plants landed when I first moved in, the major herb garden out by the veg garden, and the newest one, a small hillock near the kitchen door. The major garden has suffered the same inattentive fate as the perennial gardens this year. It is a weedy mess. Though I do confess most of the weeds are herbs themselves, mostly dill and arugula, so weeding it is actually a pleasantly fragrant chore.

So in the major herb garden, which I now mostly avoid because I am disappointed in myself for not paying ample attention to it, I discovered a surprise. The pineapple sage is blooming.




Isn't it pretty? (Excuse the poor quality of the photos. It is raining (imagine), and the wind was whipping things around.) I thought it was lobelia (cardinal flower), which is nearby, but it wasn't. I got it at this nursery my mom frequents in Indiana. This nursery charges $20 for a flat of 4" pots. Criminal, in other words: you can get 75 well-established plants (perennials, annuals, herbs) for $100. So I bought pineapple sage on a gluttonous splurge this spring, not really intending to use it, but thinking "oh, isn't that interesting."