The foxgloves are big in my yard.  Not as big or numerous as last year, but bigger than they’re supposed to be.  They really love the soil in that corner for some reason.  Digitalis babeyyy.  Meanwhile my husband has acquired a datura plant, also known as the jimsonweed, thornapple, devil’s trumpet – a nightshade cousin dripping with psychoactive and deadly scopolamine.

Anyone remember “Back in the Saddle Again”?  No, not that one.  We’re not ridin’ into town tonight lord by the light of the moon, lookin’ for suki jo at crazy horse saloon.  I mean the one out where a friend is a friend.  Anyway, old Gene said the longhorn cattle feed on the lowly jimsonweed, and I say he’s a very bad cowboy if he’s letting that happen.  Song is supposed to be happy, it should be like “longhorn cattle feed, keep ’em off the jimsonweed.”

My husband regaled me with funny and/or spooky passages from a subreddit about datura.  Probably ended up there because I was questioning his estimation of risk vs aesthetics, like, you really want that back there?  Go ahead and creep yourself out with the drug stories.  High school fun.

As for the plant’s plantliness, it has allelopathic properties and likes to spread so he’s keeping it in a pot.  No flowers yet, but we shall see.  On the subject of the foxgloves, they’re fun to look at, but wildly productive with the seeds, and they take up a lot of space.  I’d say it’s less like he’s gardening them and more like he’s allowing them to exist, for now.  I’ve seen them running wild by the 320th / I-5 overpass into Federal Way.  Maybe it’s an invasive plant’s world these days, and we’re just living in it.

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