We visited Chanticleer this morning and I feel like I missed certain plants or focused on the wrong things, but on second thought I realize I saw what my eyes wanted to see. I really liked their transitions from one space to the next, for example the various paths (formal, undefined, grass, stones, pebbles, steps, etc). As we came out of the "ruins" the sunlight hit the grass' pink plumes and suddenly I felt perfectly lost in a way I felt at Elizabeth Schumacher's garden last week and a way I felt ten years ago visiting the Accademia in Venice. There is something so fantastic about these gardens we've looked at that I can't help but compare to collections of art.  The pairings at Chanticleer reassured the uneducated, intuitive-based plant choices I've made so far in a couple gardens. Mixing Angelina sedum (Sedum rupestre 'Angelina') with lambs ear (Stachys byzantina) seemed risky but the texture and color contrast actually provides and awkwardly striking attraction that feels exotic ... like the Rockies... not the Andes. Another combination at home that we saw at Chanticleer was Verbena (Verbena bonariensis) with Russian sage (Perovskia antriplicifolia):  my verbena came from  a nearby estate we worked on last year and the sage from a little  2" container that I couldn't decide where to plant in a clients garden- so it came home with me and I ended up shoving it in the ground with very little care before one of this past summer's few thunderstorms came rolling in. Even though I love the two together, I still wonder(ed) how an expert would critique this choice.  I guess I done did OK.   

Talk about days where a blanket and a nap sound amazing! There are few days where I'd prefer to be sitting on the couch over making a mess somewhere, but the consistency of the rain and the furnace humming from the basement (yes, we turned it on) could put me to sleep in less than 3 minutes. I'm also addicted to watching the bird feeder today: the birds seem very happy about the lack of squirrels and I love scaring the squirrels off when they do appear. Speak of the devil. I'm also actually content with the garden right now. 

I planted both echinacea this summer but I need to find the tag for the cultivar in the middle picture because memory tells me I planted the 'Cheyenne,' and this does not look like what I thought the Cheyenne looks like. I bumped the little purple flowers (on the right) when I pulled up to my mom's garden this afternoon when I stopped in to see the dog (he had a lot to say!) 
On an unrelated note, a walk through the woods this evening with 4-legs really made the seasons apparent. If not the season change .. we have new human visitors? Or The deer have made themselves more than comfortable and the fallen leaves exposed their highways! We'll see.  Below are a few of the summer-flowering perennials we (kind of) discussed in Herbaceous plants this morning.