Purple Dragons

There is a family of plants called Lamium that creep along the ground and have variegated leaves. Their common name is dead nettle which sounds awful for something so beautiful but I think this may be because they prefer shade (older cemeteries are often shady) and when their flowers are past their bloom, they turn dry and brown.

The Lamium pictured here doesn't do that, the dry brown part that is. This is a cultivar (a plant bred for a specific trait) of Lamium maculatum called Purple Dragon. (Isn't that a cool name?) The individual flowers rear up like a head (this trait is often called a turtle head) and the color, well in my opinion this is one of the best purples you will find in the botanical world.

It grows very low to the ground, no more than 4 inches at its tallest, and the leaves are always this color. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it in the shady backyard of a house my friend Carrie owned.

It does spread but not too fast, loves shade, really does a good job of keeping weeds out, and blooms for a long time. Gorgeous, isn't it?

And a George update: our sixth cat spent five nights outdoors and last night he appeared just as my husband was walking from my office to the house. They meowed at each other for a while and Jay must have said something significant because George stationed himself by the front door and yowled to come back inside.

So we opened the door. This afternoon, on a suggestion from my sister who once had two cats who pulled the same stunt on her, we bought a whole new litterbox rig to make absolutely sure that the smell in the plastic was obliterated.

We've decided to let him out if he wants to go but when I opened the door for him this morning, he turned around and walked away.

We'll see how it goes.