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Five Favorites: Black Beauties

Pepper 'Black Pearl' (Capsicum annuum) with 'Bright Lights' Swiss chard

When we’re young, we “learn our colors”; when we start gardening, we have to learn them all over again. Well, some of them are the basically the same: white is white, pretty much, and most of us are pretty confident in describing a flower or leaf as red, orange, yellow, or green. When we start getting into blue and purple, though–particularly in catalog descriptions–it’s practically a free-for-all. “Blue” can mean anything from grayish green to a sort of lavender-pink to the blue we learned as a primary color to a distinctly purplish blue. Our purple, too, is often very different from what non-gardeners might describe as that color: “Purple” flowers and foliage may be anything from deep red or burgundy to chocolate brown to a purple so dark it is practically black.

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Guest Posting, with Bonus Alpacas

2004_1117Image0005Two bits of Hayefield news today. First, I’m guest-blogging over at At Home in the Garden; if you have a few minutes, come check it out. And second, Daniel and Duncan finally have their own page here, at About the Alpacas. They figure that with other alpacas getting their shot at stardom in commercials and on late-night television, it’s their turn to act as ambassadors of alpacadom. At least they haven’t asked to have their own blog – yet.