Salvia azurea, I can't help myself...it's one of my favorite plants and I don't know why

It would seem that if you loved a plant or a person or a place you ought to be able to explain what it is that drives your passion. Usually I can do this but not here. It's a pretty plant; the flowers are azure as the name suggests which is good. It flowers in the fall on tall reedy stems that often succumb to gravity by arching down until they hit something. Maybe its the sky blue flowers that occasionally are silhouetted against the even bluer skies of autumn. It's a tough plant demanding good drainage and, with the least bit of acclimation, able to resist prolonged droughts.

We saw it on a dolomite barren in Alabama last summer. A few months later Joan let me plant a few of the plants that had been bequeathed to us by the Herb Garden. I sited them on the slope above the parking area adjacent to the Capitol Columns. Its a hot, dry, exposure of sandy soil but all four lived with no supplemental watering and are flowering now. Still...my feelings for it are disproportionate to its virtues. I don't suppose it matters though.