Surly, party of two!

Good heavens, where did the day go? Part of it is my own fault--I stayed up too late again last night. I was doing so well for a while there, so I need to get back to it!

One of our local stores had perennials on sale for $2.50. Woohoo! A couple of years ago, Ken put in a large flower bed out by the road, and I've been trying to build up the perennials. I planted annuals one year, and that's just too much to spend every year! Besides, I love it when things just come up by themselves! The daisies are doing really well and just starting to bloom, and the coreopsis is also thriving. The sedum is looking good, too. There were a few things I planted, though, that didn't survive, so I have a few bare spots. I've been waiting for perennials to go on sale and I saw in yesterday's paper that they were at this place.

Anyhoo, I found out which ones were on sale and started picking out some. I'd only found 3 or so that I really liked--the rest needed more shade, or looked bedraggled. At one point, a young guy who worked there came over to put a couple more pots on the shelves. I smiled at him and said hi, and kept looking. He came back a couple minutes later, saw me still looking, and said, "Ma'am, we've got a whole bunch more at the back. Brand new ones." I said, "Really?!" He said, "Yeah, all the way at the back, behind the greenhouse." I said, "Wow, great! Thank you!" smiled at him again, and he gave me the biggest, happiest smile I think I've ever seen. It was like I made HIM happy because he saw how happy he'd made ME! That just kind of made my day. As Frank Burns said to Hotlips in "M*A*S*H," "It's nice to be nice to the nice!"

So I head off to the back to find the other perennials, and holy moley--SCORE! They had tons of them laid out on flats, and I found the size that was on sale. They had some different varieties, too, kinds that weren't in the spot where I'd started out. I started looking and finding some that I wanted and that can handle full sun, and while I was looking, an older guy with a clipboard said, "We haven't checked these in yet." I said, "I'm sorry, what?" He repeated himself. (And there was no tone of niceness there whatsoever.) I said, "Oh...one of the guys sent me back here." The older guy flapped his hand at me and said, "Take it then." He walked away from me still muttering.

Remember Surly Grocery Clerk? I think it was her dad! I didn't let him get to me, though--Happy Smiling Guy proved to be a very powerful antidote! Hmm, I think there's a lesson to be learned there.

Another thing I needed to get was some storage bins for...well, storing stuff. I got 5 of them, and I put the 8 perennials I got in the top one. It ended up pretty heavy, and I was really struggling to get them into my trunk. If you've never had a Mustang, they're notorious for having small trunks. After trying to fit them in a couple of ways, the bins and flowers ended up in my passenger seat! I felt worn out by the time I was done tangling with the bins, so I decided to plant my flowers tomorrow.

When I was unloading the bin lids from the trunk, I saw something that I didn't pay attention to when I loaded them in. I actually laughed out loud, and knew I had to take a picture for my J-Land friends. Note the warning label: Don't store babies in this bin!

I hope you're all having a lovely day, one with more smiles and less surliness!