I had the pleasure of taking a tour through an urban garden in Ottawa. Here are some photos. Thank-you to Ed Kulka for the notes.

fig tree

fringed loosestrife

lemon balm

kale

purslane: ground cover or traditional edible weed

Henry David Thoreau wrote: “I have made a satisfactory dinner off a dish of purslane which I gathered and boiled. Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not from want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.”

musk mallow

dahlia

tomatillo: or Mexican husk tomato often used in salsa verde

petit pain squash

French tarragon

gooseberry

black currant bush with berries. Leaves also used as a tea.

garden huckleberry (Solanum scabrum) with some black (mature) berries

nasturtium: orange flower used in salads

borage: only herb with an edible blue flower

oregano (pink flower)

garden sage (Salvia officinalis)

cilantro: also called coriander

cilantro with still green coriander seed

mustard greens: generic term for a variety of spicy salad greens in the mustard family

mint

rhubarb

sunchoke or Jerusalem artichoke, a member of the sunflower family. Produces an edible tuber smaller but similar to a potato. There are both wild and cultivated varieties.

lovage flower: the leaves are used as a soup herb and the seeds can be used as a spice.

orange cherry tomatoes (indeterminate). They flower and produce for the full season until first frost.

Italian sweet basil

reishi (Jap.) or Ling Chi (Chinese) the mushroom of immortality. This is a traditional medicinal mushroom usually dried, powdered and and drunk as a tea. Photo shows the mushrooms in the antler stage before flattening out into the mature bracket /polypore/conk stage

pink oyster mushrooms in the primordia stage before they expand into full mushrooms

VEGETABLE and FRUIT PORTRAITS

These are works by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 – 1593)

Miles Hearn