Saturday Highlights (edited with an addition)

Spurred by some of my fellow bloggers... and rejuvenated by my time volunteering at the Botanical Garden this morning... I decided to get my crabby butt back out into the garden today and get working on a few things. Specifically, I wanted to get the trellis painted, so that I can add the metal tubing crosspieces yet this weekend, and lift the poor grapevine up off of the ground.

In the meantime, I had plenty of time to enjoy and appreciate the surrounding garden. To atone for my crankiness with it yesterday, I'm going to show a few highlights from the back garden today. First, I really like the area where this tiny sedum hispanicum resides in the shallowest end of the dry loch garden, surrounded by stones and overlapped by cabbage leaves:


These curly onions (allium senescens) are fun in foliage and in flower... my 'Caradonna' salvia picks up the purple in their pinkish blooms:


This hosta--which is probably 'Sum and Substance' but is a division from an unlabeled plant in the garden at work--lives partly under the grape arbor and I love seeing it backlit:


A much more Kim-friendly pink, the almost-red blooms of 'Purple Emporer' sedum, hovering over variegated oregano:


A tiny but bold-colored portulaca, which somehow seeded itself at the edge of my 'Yellow Pear' tomato pot:


Now here's some pizazz! Russian sage, 'Hopi Red Dye' amaranth, and miscanthus zebrinus:


And this lonicera sempervirens may just qualify as fireworks, especially with more of the purple-leaf 'Hopi Red Dye' amaranth in the background:


Quieter beauty, this little vignette reminds me of the Pacific Northwest (okay, I can dream, can't I?! lol) with Japanese bloodgrass, 'Othello' ligularia, hellebores, 'Chocolate Chip' ajuga, and 'All Gold' hakonechloa:


Another shady spot, this one looking a little worse for the wear due to our drought but still interesting with pulmonaria, 'Hillside Black Beauty' actaea (nee cimicifuga) and a gold-variegated toad lily:


One last Saturday picture, this one of a spot that always seems cool and refreshing, even throughout our drought. Silver-streaked sansevieria in a blue pot, with 'Jack Frost' brunnera nestled at its feet:


As for the "to do" list, well... although the mirror says I might have gotten more stain on me than I did on any wooden structures, I did finish up the arbor tonight! However, I did it as the sun was setting and the mosquitoes started to bite.... so pictures of that will come tomorrow. (Or maybe Monday, as I'm set to hang out with friends at a campground all day tomorrow.) But in any case, I'm very satisfied to report that I'm a much less crabby gardener today!

**edited Sunday morning to add this picture of the painted arbor before I head out to the campgrounds:**