ABOVE
Pineapple sage (Salvia)

This plant has survived since we moved to this house, in a corner where we wanted to make an herb garden, even after many other kinds of herbs disappeared. It’s the strongest in our yard – even more than mint! Without succumbing to the summer legion of grasshoppers, it puts out red flowers in the autumn; the leaves have a pineapple fragrance that gives the plant its name. We tried to grow some other sage for cooking, but never succeeded. Instead of that, we sometimes use pineapple sage for cooking. (We don’t know if we should.)

ABOVE
Cosmos (C. sulphureus)

The east side garden gets better sunlight than other parts of our yard, so we decided to grow yellow and orange flowers there. The cosmos blooms at almost the same time as the sunflowers. (I should put it in the summer category?) We collected some seeds when we out for a walk, and now the cosmos blooms every year. It seems to grow well from seeds. It grows very well: without trimming, it would block our way though the narrow path to the kitchen garden. If we had a bigger place it could grow bigger; but we don’t, so we have to ask the cosmos to suffer in a small, twenty-centimetre-wide flower bed.

Date posted: 2004-08-09