Bleeding Heart - garden gif

Seeing the dangling flowers of the perennial Bleeding Heart (Dicentra) plant gave me a shock when I first saw them growing in the yard of an elderly neighbor as a child. ‘What is this, what strange magic … tiny heart pouches hanging out on a clothes line’. It seemed custom made for the type of old-world, doily festooned grandma who my parents hired as babysitters for my sister and I. The association with old fashioned nana personalities has remained with me ever since, but I’ve also come to appreciate the varieties with bright chartreuse leaves that brighten the shady patches of the garden so well.

Bleeding heart garden gif