I succumbed to another ....

hydrangea, of course. This time it is an Annabelle Arborescens hydrangea. I had said that I was not fond of the big mop-head hydrangeas, but I have bought one anyway. I couldn't resist this one when I was at Home Hardware today. They had a whole bunch of perennials brought in from a nursery north of Quebec City. The clerk told me that this nursery grows their perennials in pots for 2-3 years before selling them; the implication being that they will be extremely hardy for our Canadian climate.
I asked her "so aren't they pot-bound then?"  She hesitated and then said "well, yes I guess so". Duh!

You never know what advice you are going to get from people. She rang in my purchase and asked if I knew how to plant it, I nodded my head yes, then another store clerk passed and said "coffee grounds, mix in some coffee grounds".  We shall see, I actually have a bowl of dried coffee grounds on the kitchen counter to use when planting. Perhaps this hydrangea will benefit from some of those.

The plant I bought has no blooms, so I am going on trust that it is what they say it is. Unlike the other hydrangeas, I am going to plant this one in a sunny spot and then next summer I am going to plant some tall daisies next to it. I saw this combination in a video and it looked really nice, the white of both plants complementing each other.