Since Fine Gardening is located in Connecticut, it’s not often that we are visited by fun gardening friends from other areas of the country. (Hey, let’s face it. We have nice beaches and great antiques, but CT isn’t exactly a happening hot spot.) So we were thrilled to learn that Amy Stewart of Garden Rant infamy would be swinging through earlier this week to do a reading from her new book, Wicked Plants, at a local bookstore. Web editor Kate Frank and I drove down to meet Amy for dinner and some ranting and we had an absolute blast.

Favorite moments of the night:

1. Walking down Main Street in Madison and watching Amy become incensed about a store that had decided to wrap a plastic morning glory vine around their trellis out front (see photo).

2. During the introduction to the reading Amy said, “So when I began researching this book, I didn’t simply look for plants that were poisonous–because that would’ve been boring–I looked for body counts. I wanted to know about the plants that had actually been used in some sort of deadly manner.” Hmm…

3. Amy showing the crowd her “poisonous plants box.” (If you don’t know what I’m talking about check it out when she comes to a town near you.) I just want to know how she gets that box through airport security when I get stopped because TSA thinks my camera tripod is a rocket launcher.

Anyway, thanks for the fun, Amy!

And here’s Amy’s video promoting her book, Wicked Plants: