Grey Days and Scarlet Sage

[ursulav]

It’s a grey day in the garden, and it’s beautiful.

Why this particular grey day is beautiful, and the last handful just made me want to sleep for a week, I will leave for the reader-either you know the difference in greys or you don’t, and there’s not much point in explaining it. Possibly it has to do with the thunderstorm that is wandering around

Comments

[wedschilde]

The cactus has a roundup supersoaker uzi and will go out in a blaze of glory, taking scores of innocents with him.

[pickledginger]

Sounds like a plan -- I love Darwinian gardening.

We are having a glorious gray day here, as well, with a light, crisp breeze and layer upon layer of fascinating clouds.

[ladycelia]

It's grey, cold, and promising damp here. Tomorrow I'm off, and tomorrow I'll plant. Yay!

[mathnerd]

Not, All the Blood Sage, All the Thyme? *ducks*

[firelizard5]

I also spent the day puttering away outside. Anyone have a suggestion for a good NC native flower that can survive full sun but doesn't get huge? I want to put in a bed around the mailbox, because it is a pain to mow.

[ursulav]

What's the moisture like? And define "huge" in this context. *grin*

[firelizard5]

It's at the top of a hill, so it has good drainage (or at least as good as it can be, on clay).

It needs to stay below the level of the box. We have a snarky mailman who writes DO NOT BLOCK BOX on the mail if anything is even close to it.

[ursulav]

Hmm, fair amount of options. A compact aster might not be bad, though you'd want to keep it clipped occasionally. If it's genuinely well drained, you can do a coreopsis, which wouldn't get too tall (as long as you don't get, y'know, Tall Tickseed or something.) Black-eyed susans are pretty well unkillable. Tradescantia--spiderwort--would probably be my choice, since they have tough, day-lily like foliage, don't get over-tall (though they'll expand out) and have attractive purple flowers in spring and occasional fall, plus being extremely tough. (A really murderous summer will send them dormant, in which case you'd want to plug in petunias or something until they revive.)