Abstract: Many dark energy (DE) models are based on a scalar field with timelike gradient while black holes (BHs) serve as probes of strong gravity. In this talk we begin with a review of the systematic construction of the effective field theory (EFT) describing perturbations around the Minkowski background with a timelike scalar profile and its extension to cosmological backgrounds, i.e. the ghost condensation and the EFT of inflation/DE. If one hopes to learnsomething about the EFT of DE from BHs then one needs to consider BH solutions with timelike scalar profiles. We thus extend the EFT to arbitrary backgrounds. Finally, we discuss applications of the general EFT to study perturbations of BH with a timelike scalar field responsible for DE.