An unprepossessing opening picture, true.
It was a glorious bright-sunny day, so the interior seems dark dark dark. These are the pair of South-facing windows in our dining room; they're unusually large for an 18th C. house. With such low sills my guess is that they're a 19th C. addition. Whatever: They are a pleasure welcoming the Winter sun as well as the Summer view. I planted all kinds of plants to make that view worthwhile. Here's the show out the lower-left sash.
Boy do I love these plants. We'll look at most of them, and soon. Right now, the gold-leaved Japanese maple.
Yup, that's the color, and all season long: Glowing gold but not over the line into "Jeez, honey, where are my sunglasses?" yellow.

It's a Japanese maple too, mind you, so has that tribe's multi-trunked classy look to the branches and trunks. So yes, it's good even in Winter, when (alas, sniff, sigh) the leaves have fallen. But if we're lucky (I haven't been so far, but I live in faith), the Fall weather is such that just the tips of the leaves turn a cherry Fall red, leaving a round interior of each leaf still gold—hence the "Full Moon" of the common name. The tree is very slow growing, so buy the biggest you can afford. After a couple of decades, it might be only 18 feet tall. It's happy in amazing amounts of shade too; conversely, it handles full sun without scorching only if the soil is rich and it doesn't have to beg for water. I never water mine even though it's on the South side of the house and gets full West sun. So I guess my soil passes the test on both counts.
More on the companion plants later—and soon.