Findings

On Friday night Krissy went to dinner with her mom and sister. I stayed in home because of a kid obligation in the early evening. Once that was done I took advantage of the unexpected evening of bachelor freedom in the way any normal red-blooded man would.

I went plant shopping. (normal for me anyway)

First stop was the local Agway in Morris Plains. Agway has the nicest plants around. The only problem is they are a tad on the pricy side. Although I was a bit tempted by some of the Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'.  It's purplish flowers had just come out and it really did look beautiful. 

Next stop was the Lowes up on exit route 23. Of the big boxes, I find Lowes generally has the best selection, plus they take pretty good care of their plants. The prices aren't too bad either.

I don't know what it was, but after I had only been browsing around for a minute , someone called out "I have some bargains over here".

Clearly someone had pegged me for the gardener /cheapskate that I am.

The garden manager showed me slightly forlorn plants, clearly past their peak, but still healthy looking. Looking down I saw about a dozen gallardia and eight columbine.

Columbine

I know virtually nothing about either. Columbine sort of looks like dicentra so I figured it's native, which (for me) equals hard to kill. The gallardia looked tough and stringy more like a hot dry plant than anything else so (for me and my shady wet yard) easy to kill.

Gallardia

Two bucks apiece. She offered they had already been marked down from like 11

Now I don't know much about haggling but I do know that it's good to get all of something so I countered with "OK but if you let me have the columbine for a buck apiece I'll take them all".

"Deal"

Score!

So about 18 bucks for like 13 plants. The next thing I spotted was this willow shrub. It's combination of white green and pink was really interesting. About 15 bucks

So I had done pretty well. And was ready to check out. When I saw this bad boy.

Now my track record with Japanese maples has not been good I bought one blood good about five years ago and my neighbors fence (actually IRS my fence, only he doesn't think so, but that is another long complicated story) fell on top of it.

This is my other jm.

Nice huh

But in theory these are hard to kill and I hadn't put up a tree this year. Plus only about 80 bucks.

Last but not least I picked up this little Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki

I know nothing about this bad boy, but I liked the brilliant colors, plus the fact that is supposedly good in wet shady areas (of which I have a lot).  Well see how it does.

So I loaded up the car like the grinches sled and was off to home.

Where to plant? That is a story for tomorrow.