Campanula glomerata (clustered bellflower) from Botanica’s Pocket Gardening Encyclopedia

How I love a good mystery! Be it an old Agatha Christie movie featuring Monsieur Hercule Poirot, or a riveting, who-done-it page turner, it’s fun playing detective as one follows a story, trying to discover tell-tale clues. I daresay, even the garden or yard can present its own version of a mystery. And they can be many.

“What’s eating my prized black radish plants?” a frustrated neighbour asked yesterday, having found no culprit thus far. Insects? Rabbits? Raccoons?

A couple of days ago, another neighbour asked if I recognized a particular flower in bloom at a nearby American cottager’s place. She is tending his gardens since the couple has  been unable to cross the border, closed due to COVID-19.

She wondered if it was a weed that should be pulled as it seemed to be taking over one end of a garden bed. It had big, beautiful, purple flower heads.

It took delving into several of my garden reference books before an answer was found.   Thanks to Botanica’s Pocket Gardening Encyclopedia (quite the pocket book with over 1,000 pages!), the plant in question is not a weed but a Campanula glomerata (clustered bellflower). This one is called Superba.

My own yard recently presented me with a mystery.

A plant with interesting foliage appeared under an old expired euonymus that was recently removed. I liked the foliage. Could it be a garden perennial or a wildflower planted by wind or birds?

Geranium bicknellii (Bicknell’s cranesbill) from Weeds of Canada

Digging into my stash of gardening reference books once again, I discovered, alas, it is a weed called Geranium bicknellii (Bicknell’s cranesbill). It’s also commonly called Bicknell’s Geranium. It’s found throughout Canada and also throughout the northern United States. It is not a noxious weed — mainly a pest due to its habit of growing in gardens, row crops and on roadsides.

Two mysteries solved!