Retail Therapy is the Best Medicine

Between dealing with some health issues that sapped quite a bit of my energy, keeping the garden/greenhouse watered, and garden touring, I realized that it had been weeks since I'd visited a nursery.  The plant mobile was more than happy to take me to Watson's for some retail therapy.

A little light shopping to make up for lost time. Feeling better already!

Really, those were carts of summer stock that had been taken off the shelves to make room for the warm colors of autumn.

Outside there were quite a few varieties of hardy hibiscus.  H. 'Summer Storm'

That gorgeous dark foliage was certainly tempting.  Maybe I should go back and get one of these.

Forgot the name of this one.

H. 'Party Favor'

H. 'Tie Dye'

H. 'Plum Fantasy'

H. 'Cranberry Crush'

What, no chartreuse?  What color(s) would you choose?  The purple/blue combination is nice and orange, red, and yellow might look swell too.

Say it's not so. There was kale too.  Valerie Easton once wrote that after the last lily blooms are faded, the inexorable glide into autumn happens quickly but I'm not ready for September 23 quite yet!

Fortunately, these look good year round!

Swimming up a river of hosta.

A great color combination! Though I'm not a huge fan of beige/cram colored pots, these work well here.

The "room"  that changes several times each year seems to have been taken over by drought-tolerant plants for the summer.

Canna Tropicana Black has attractive dark foliage and these great orange blooms. 

Heucheras always look so good at the nursery and in other people's gardens.

Sexy rex begonias.

The little-known marshmallow agave.

Swell sansevieria.

So, what came home with me?  Podophyllum 'Spotty Dotty.' One can never have too many Podophyllum!

 Daphne 'Briggs Moonlight' which I've killed a couple of times but am determined to keep alive this time as it's just so gorgeous.

Last but not least is Begonia grandis, which is quite hardy. 

The begonia and podophyllum are in the ground already.  I'm afraid to take the daphne out of it's pot. If you've been successful with 'Briggs Moonlight,' what's the secret to making it happy?  There are other daphnes in my garden that are thriving.

Happy weekend! We're supposed to get heavy rain again.  Hooray!