Just a couple of orange couch potatos – I love this photo.

Actually, there’s a whole series of shots, but the ones showing me full length are too horrible for the Internet. Stuey’s also the reason I’m in a gardening frame of mind. I got all the plants in the ground tonight at last – somehow $95 worth of perennials looks kinda small, but I’m pretty sure they’ll grow (some of them will grow to 2 – 3 feet). There’ll be a rain barrel right near them so watering them won’t be a chore.

I got lupine, spiked gayfeather, blue oat grass, border pinks, cheddar pinks, larkspur, black eyed susan, coral bells, snow-in-summer, and of course cat mint. I thought I got 3 catmint plants, but only had two when I put everything in the ground. I checked the trunk of the car and the front porch, where the plants overnighted. Mysterious. Will check around one more time just to see if David stuck one plant off to one side when he helped to bring them in.

I’ll have to go to Knupper’s at some point; I’ve been to Random Acres and Home Depot, and I know Frank’s has some but not all of the plants I want to get. I’d like to get some native plants in the back day-lily bed and Franks had some last year, for example, but they don’t carry the mulch and container plants I like. Knupper’s has the best choices of container plants; shame they’re all the way up in Palatine where we used to live. I didn’t see what I wanted at Random Acres when I was there Sunday for the front-stoop whisky barrel, and I know where to find what I want at Knuppers. I ordered the kitty birdwatcher statue tonight. I think I’ll order another rainbarrel for the “dry corner” of the house, where we’ve been told by the horticulture guy from Chemlawn to water more frequently. I found last year that the convenience of having the rainbarrel right by the shady bed where I had the impatiens meant that I had nice, healthy blooming impatiens all summer, almost until we left on the trip. It’s an inconvenient bother to get the hose from the infamous tap in the garage, but it’s easy to get it from a handy rain barrel right where you need to water. I just need to get one more shepherds hook for the kitty garden, another birdfeeder, and it’s done.