today steve and i went to breakfast at a beautiful farm-to-table restaurant in south minneapolis called wise acre eatery. but first a culinary digression. we went there specifically to buy their thick-cut, unsmoked bacon. our recent time spent eating and cooking in france, has hooked us on the joys of cooking with lardons, which shouldn’t be, but are in fact very difficult to find in Minnesota, land of Hormel, where bacon means smoked bacon. end of digression. in the end, what stunned me at wise acre eatery this morning was neither the breakfast hash, which was delectable, nor the bacon, which is the best we’ve found, but the landscaping, which appeared to include about 50 varieties of coleus. when, exactly, did this happen?  i am pretty observant. i like to visit botanical gardens and conservatories. but never have i seen so many cultivars in one place. is there a secret laboratory somewhere with eccentric botanists madly hybridizing coleus? the last time i landed on planet earth there appeared to be only a dozen or so varieties. whoa.

a collection of coleus leaves

wise acre eatery, minneapolis, minnesota