It looks a lot like oxalis violacea, does it flower pale purple in spring ?

I just looked and it has tiny yellow flowers. so I checked again using oxalis in my search. it almost looks like yellow wood sorrel, but the leaves are a grey/green. they call it sour grass, but the sour grass I ate as a kid had green leaves and grew taller. it doesn't sound like I want it in my garden.

No, probably not...the yellow wood sorrel (which usually is green leaved), spreads by tiny tiny exploding seeds and thus is a nightmare to eliminate. Oxalis tends to be that way. I read that people growing tropical oxalis in pots, find it coming up many meters from the parent.

Looks like O. corniculata. This is quite a nuisance, with one of its common names being Damn Sorrel.

That is exactly what it is: Damn Sorrel. I will work on getting rid of it. Thanks everyone

Damn sorrel! Imagine! :)