Ajuga

Nice close up !

Thanks Simbad! I love this little plant. I was warned...oh, don't plant that it will take over!... :-) I just love it and I have enough room for it to roam so I'm not too concerned. It's always been my way.. if a plant is growing and crowding or if it's getting out of hand... just pull it out (and keep pulling it out) and it will go away eventually. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!) ;-)

Haha I have it too and move it all over the garden its easy to pull out isn't it , unlike the saponaria that I planted in a border why did I do that!! Its grown into everything but remarkably things have grown through it and I saw my first Hummingbird hawk moth on it last year , see I'm making excuses for it now lol.

I have a confession... I LOVE saponaria. My grandad had it growing just below his kitchen window and the aroma was just so sweet on the breeze off the lake. As a small child we would don our swim suits and take a towel ...run across the road (my mother used to yell at us..."watch for cars!" ) and tippy-toe along the gravel drive and then dash past grandad's back door on the way to the lake for a splash on a hot summer's day. The smell of saponaria instantly takes me back to those childhood summer days in Muskoka. the hawkmoths and hummers used to visit it too. It was many years later that I actually found out why it was planted in that spot... It was used to scent the bluing and starch that was used in the laundry and they used to call it Bouncing Bette. I actually think it might have been part of the reason we bought our present home...it was because there is saponaria growing beneath the bedroom window!

The border it's growing in us outside our kitchen window and I love that scent too!, isn't it strange how smells can bring back such happy memories your childhood sounded idyllic Lori :-)

Looking back, I think it was idyllic. The winters were always terribly cold and long... but the summers! and living on the shores of Muskoka Lake...well, it doesn't get much better than that either. the air and the water was cleaner than now and the soil had a special smell. Perhaps I should take off my rose coloured glasses? LOL... all this from a whiff of saponaria! It grows well with daylilies and likes to "cuddle" up to the foundations of the house..it will weave it's way through long grasses and it reminds me that I had thought to put some down by the stream this summer. It's Canada Day, today, and we're all flying the Red and White and hoping for RAIN..we don't need fireworks ...we need rain and lots of it. This May and June are the driest since 1959.