I just returned from Lowe's in the Edgewood shopping center (Atlanta), where I encountered a table full of black and blue salvias. They're selling them as annuals, but I could've sworn they were perennial here...so I asked one of the guys working in the garden center, "these are perennials, right?" "Nope," he answered as he pointed to the "annuals" sign on the table, "they're annuals...see?" "Oh," I said suspiciously, "I really thought they were perennials." So the guy called another dude over and asked him. "Uh-uh, they're annuals," the second guy confirmed as he pointed to the pots, which had the word "annuals" clearly written on their sides. Well, it's not that I'm generally inclined to doubt the expertise of Lowe's garden center employees...but in end, neither their obvious literacy nor the fact that the word "annuals" was scrawled everywhere I looked was enough to mitigate my conviction that black and blue salvias can indeed live through an Atlanta winter. So I bought two. Anyhow, the point of all this is that Lowe's is currently selling one-gallon salvia guaraniticas for only $4.98. Assuming that I, and not two Lowe's employees, one sign, and a whole bunch of plant pots, am right, it seems like a pretty good deal.