I’m not a plant person. I mean, I eat them with glee. I’ve never met a green veggie I haven’t liked. But as a gardener, if I say “I kill cacti”, it tells you all you need to know.

I appreciate flowers, too. I guess. They’re pretty. But I’m not the kind of person who wants roses (I can think of about 100 better uses for the money and I’m not a floral scent kinda girl). Formal gardens– even informal gardens– rank right down there around muddy Civil War battlefields on my how-to-spend-a-day list. Actually, I enjoy a good poison garden, but there aren’t nearly enough of those around. So when my mother-in-law suggested that we go to Mount Usher Gardens in Ashford, I sighed. Inwardly. I love my m-i-l and enjoy the time we spend together, so I figured I’d take one for the Himself Family team, and go. Go we went, covering just about every inch of the 22 acres.

It was pretty terrific.

It was a lovely spring day, the pre-garden lunch was excellent and, best of all, there was something just….well, off enough about a lot of the plants that it made them very interesting and quirkily wonderful. For example:

There are countless rhododendrons in many varieties. A lot are in bloom right now. Yes, yes, very pretty. But I liked this one.

The petals had fallen off, leaving stem clusters that looked like huge spiders.

There were palm trees that looked like the Lorax.

And something that looked blood-spattered.

This was just huge and weird.

The pet cemetery was a little wild and sad.

This California Dogwood, with the nearby Golden Poppies, made me think of home.

And a cork tree, of course, made me think of Ferdinand, who liked to just sit and smell the flowers.

Me? I’d rather sit and smell this.

It’s wild garlic and it was everywhere, cheerful and abundant and fragrant. Ferdinand can have his roses. I like my perfume to smell like dessert and my plants to smell like dinner.