Verbena bonariensis & a Red Kerosene Stove
Sunday, August 18, 2019
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| Verbena bonariensis 19 August 2019 |
Winters in
my boyhood Buenos Aires were damp and cold. The only warm room was our
kitchen. Our live-in housekeeper Mercedes Basaldúa would turn on the gas oven
and open the oven door.
In other
rooms we had a tall red kerosene stove. The stench of the kerosene was awful.
Mercedes would put a pan of water with leaves from a bush in our garden that we
called cedrón. Sixty nine years later I can now with the quick help of Google
tell you that the plant in question was Aloysia
citriodora which is a member of the Verbenaceae or in plane language a
member of the verbena family.
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| October 24 2016 |
In our
Kitsilano garden we have another verbena, Verbena bonariensis. It has lightly
fragrant flowers in a plant that can be up to 6ft tall. Because it is slender
and self-seeding this plant is a friendly plant in the garden. It allows you to
see what is behind if you put it in the front of the border or it can grow in
the back and you can still see its flowers.
I would
have never known, but I do now that our Kits Verbena bonariensis is somehow
linked with a stinky red kerosene stove.
Mercedes would remove the stove as
soon as we got into bed and would bring us bricks that had been heated in the
oven, wrapped in soft cloth.
