Wow. I went to this Garden Center place in Cary today, and…wow.

“Do you need any help?” asked the nice woman, as I staggered through the aisles of bizarre, wildlife-attracting, never-heard-of-it-before-but-god-it’s-pretty perennials, gibbering softly.

“Don’t mind me,” I said vaguely. “I’m just having a plantgasm…”

Whether she was convulsed with amusement or horror, I don’t know, because I was distracted by creeping vervain. And campion. And catchfly. And beardstongue. And stuff I’ve read about but never actually seen in a garden shop before.

I have discovered an interesting fact about myself. If the tag says “Attracts Butterflies” or god forbid, “Attracts Hummingbirds,” I will buy it, no questions asked. You could slap a label with a happy butterfly onto a nuclear reactor, and I would begin looking for a place in the yard to put it. It’s like my Achillea heel. I am a plant junky.

So now my big front bed has another set of individual plants. It’s just about good to go. It will be a bizarre patchwork specimen bed this year, though–the seeded sections are the only thing that might come in in a mass. Otherwise it’s one campion here, one salvia here, one thrift here, one weird thing left over from the previous owner here…

Meh. Plants are like plates. It’s boring if everything matches.