Have you ever noticed how many plant names reference blood? There’s Dragon’s Blood sedum, Bleeding Hearts, Bloody Cranesbill, Bull’s Blood beets, Bloody Butcher tomatoes, Bloody Dock and my favorite squick-me-out name, Love Lies Bleeding . I bet you can think of others, too.

I have thought once or twice that it would be interesting to make a garden of all things bleeding or bloody (most of which are really beautiful). People are always making white gardens, pizza gardens, Asian gardens or other kinds of theme gardens. Why not a blood garden?

Before you think I’m just plain whack (which I might be), it’s been on my mind these last couple of days because I gave myself a bloody gardening injury. I was laying some of those 20-pound Lake Street granite blocks to make a platform for a garden bench when I crushed my little finger with one. When I pulled off my glove, there was blood everywhere, and it dripped down my arm as I ran into the house. When I saw my fingernail wasn’t where I thought it ought to be, I decided to drive myself 15 miles to the emergency room.

An x-ray showed I made little bits out of the tip of the bone, and the doc put the nail back on the nail bed. They bandaged me up and sent me home with some antibiotics and painkillers. But no one told me to sit on my butt for a couple of days. I was really into my granite block project and my finger was shot up with local so it didn’t hurt, so I thought I’d see if I could do a little gardening one handed.

The answer was no. I just made my finger bleed right through the big bandage. So as I sit in a little Vicadin haze for a couple of days, I’ve got nothing to do right now.

But think how nice a Bloodgood Japanese Maple might look in my garden.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 8:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.