It's Gray and It's Green

Friday afternoon, as Mr G and I sat on the front porch, looking into our little courtyard area I realized just about every plant shared 2 characteristics: grey-ness and spiky-ness...and with a full sun situation, that makes for a washed out and dry looking garden...I have no idea how I let that situation evolve except for perhaps thinking I would have this garden area heavily depend on herbs that could take a full day of Georgia Summer Sun without being watered every day...but regardless of how things got into this sorry state, the courtyard begged to be saved from Perpetual Grey Spikyness…

Can you see where this is heading? After all these years of wedded bliss, Mr G saw it coming…but as we all do in marriage, he has learned to not fight the inevitable…resignation is not necessarily an evil thing…I myself am a Practioner of Resignation when a military-inspired holiday rolls around and old military movie after old military movie airs on the television…On those days, I let Mr G be to enjoy his Man T.V. while I putter about the house doing girlie sort of things like re-arranging books by their colors (within topic areas, of course) and re-arranging my shelves of collectible stuff…and I try not to sigh...too often...and too loudly...

Anyhoo...

After a couple of trips to my favorite local nursery and a couple more trips to our home improvement chain store, we had the beginnings of a Do-Over for the courtyard area...

Plant material purchased Friday and Saturday:

a 3-gallon pot of yellow ginger lilies (wonderfully scented & chosen especially for Mr G)

a fall cassia tree

2 dwarf gardenias 'Radicans' (for Mr G because he loves scent in the garden as much as I do, maybe more, because I would never again try my hand at growing gardenias...they despise me)

5 Toffee Twist sedges (okay...the name was enough to earn them a spot on the cart...but I love the color & fall of these plants)

2 Crimson Pygmy barberries (I really would like about 3 more, but I snagged the last 2)

1 pot of purple ruellia (I should know better, but I planted it in a bottomless pot to control this little thug)

1 Morning Light Miscanthus (along with a gorgeous deep green pot for its home..off the clearance rack, no less)

2 dwarf Gulf Stream nandinas (to flank the 1 princess nandina)

1 big Elegant Marjorie mum (one of my my favorite color for mums)

and 3 little rosemarys for that brutal spot beneath the kitchen window...that spot has the most gorgeous dogwood I've ever seen (and I don't even like dogwoods)...but the roots make planting in that spot next to impossible..

along with 3 loropetalums for the bed next to the woods

and many bags of Jungle Grow (I believe that is the name)

Mr G earned a lot of Brownie Points this past weekend...he did not grouse or gripe or whine once...I'm going to try my best to recall this when the next Military Movie Day rolls around...I think that'll be Pearl Harbor Day in December...I should probably go ahead and just circle the date (in bold SHARPIE) on the calendar to remind myself...

Some pixs from the courtyard and from other spots in the front (my goldenrod volunteer (yea!), a magnolia pod with amazing curliques, and a red leaf from a crape myrtle)

well, crud...apparently, Blogger has decided I will not be uploading photos...I've been trying for about an hour now...I give up...Maybe I can edit them in later..

(okay, apparently, the secret is to use mozilla firefox to access blogger instead of IE)

This is the Morning Light miscanthus...in the loverly green pot that came home from the clearance shelf...
Toffee Twist to the left and Fall Cassia below

Token Red Leaf from a Crape Myrtle
Volunteer Goldenrod Elegant Marjorie lookin' good in her pot
Magnolia seed pod