Does your garden have a signature plant?   If you can't decide, maybe it's time to let your garden do the talking.    Complete the following sentence: My garden has the perfect spot to grow....(fill in the blank).    For instance, you may have the perfect spot to grow anemone.   I remember going to my friend Carmen’s house in the spring. I came around the corner and stopped in my tracks when I saw her happy anemones - so cheerful, so vibrant,... and so demanding.   Not everyone can grow anemones, but Carmen‘s garden had the perfect spot for them. And even though anemones are pretty ephemeral, I always think of them as her signature plant.    Brevities #OTD Today is National Garlic Day - it is observed every year on April 19.  Garlic, or stinking rose, is a member of the lily family. Onions, leeks, and shallots are also in the family.  This time of year, wild garlic or ransoms, are returning to the woodlands, hedgerows, and riverbanks. Wild garlic is also called bear's garlic. Folklore says that bears are eating it after hibernation. If cows graze on wild garlic, it will taint the milk with garlic flavor. Garlic is a favorite foraged seasonal ingredient of top chefs.   And it's not just a foundational ingredient for cooking - garlic is also used for medicinal purposes. Garlic has antibiotic properties, and it also helps reduce blood pressure and cholesterol. Herbalists recommend garlic as a remedy for colds.   Gilroy, California is known as the Garlic Capital of the World.   Will Rogers said this about Gilroy: “…the only place in America where you can marinate a steak just by hanging it out on a clothesline.” Atlas Obscura wrote an article last year about Gilroy. They featured Gilroy's unique recipes for garlic ice cream saying,  "The dessert divides ice-cream lovers."   An online reviewer mediated the matter with this comment, "Actually the garlic ice cream is pretty good. But a little does go a long way." The Gilroy Garlic Festival is held every year in July.   #OTD It's the birthday of E. Lucy Braun was born on April 19, 1889 in Cincinnati. The E stood for Emma, but she went by Lucy. In 1950, Braun was the first woman elected president of the Ecological Society of America. A quiet, bright, and dedicated field scientist, she worked as a botanist at the University of Cincinnati.     Braun became interested in the outdoors as a child.  Growing up on May Street in Cincinnati, her parents would take Lucy and her older sister, Annette, by horse-drawn streetcar to the woods in Rose Hill so they could spend time in the woods. The girls were taught to identify wildflowers. In turn, the girls helped gather specimens for their mother's herbarium. The girls both got PhD's - Lucy in botany, Annette in Zoology - and they never married. However, they lived together their entire lives, leaving their childhood May street for a home in Mount Washington. The sisters turned the upstairs into a laboratory and the gardens around the house into an outside laboratory. At the age of 80, Braun was still leading people on field trips in Ohio.   Friends of Braun have recounted, "To be with her in the field was something. She made everything so real, so exciting she was just so knowledgeable."   "She loved to be out in the field rain wouldn't stop her. She could walk forever." Lucy Braun said, "Only through close and reverent examination of nature can humans understand and protect its beauties and wonders." By the time she died, Emma had collected some 11,891 specimens for her own personal herbarium. This was the result of tremendous personal dedication; Braun drove over 65,000 miles during a 25 year quest throughout the eastern United States. Her heart belonged to the forests and her book, Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America, is still regarded as a definitive text. When asked about her time in the field, Braun would happily recount how she had managed to dodge moonshiners' stills in the hills of Kentucky; gathering up plant samples unseen by the