My Hydrangea Aspera Robusta is in bloom. It is a strange looking beast.
Planted several years ago at the same time as the Oak Leaf:
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Up close, it looks like a head of blue broccoli with white blossoms. Stand back a bit and it looks like the broccoli has moths.
Is hydrangea your favorite plant?
That’s nice. Good change from all the politics.
It’s just a baby…treat it kindly and it will grow up to be magnificent 🙂
Professor, true story:
I fell in love with plants and gardening as a boy. Starting about when I was 13, I would go to the large local plant nursery almost every day after school (owned by a Japanese American man who had been in a relocation camp during WWII, but who was one of the lucky ones who didn’t lose his business).
One day they are quite busy and I’m standing in line holding a one-gallon pine tree. It’s a species I’ve read about in my Sunset Western Garden Book and I’m so excited to find it. I can’t wait to get home and plant it and I’m feeling irritated that the line is moving so slowly.
Suddenly, a man with a pitchfork he intends to buy walks to the front of the line. I wait for one of the adults in line to tell him to go to the end of the line. He turns around to face the line of customers, thumps the wooden handle end of the pitchfork loudly on the floor, and glares at those of us waiting in line as if to dare anyone to confront him about this injustice. It’s Eddie Albert.
I can’t believe it. It’s a real-life picture of the opening scene in one of my favorite TV shows, Green Acres.
I think about making that Green Acres song melody sound “Bum bum ba bum bum ….. Bum Bum!!” out loud … but think better of it as he doesn’t look too friendly. I then think that maybe he’d enjoy my excellent impersonation of Mr. Haney … and come pretty close to uttering a whiny “Mister Douglassss …” but he just looks too unfriendly and menacing. I’ll never forget the image of him standing there with that pitchfork.
LukeHandCool (whose impersonation of Mr. Haney has only improved to near perfection over the years, but whose personality more closely resembles Mr. Kimball. And who reminds the world that Eddie Albert, who was a devoted organic gardener and who wrote a book on the subject, not only talked the talk … he walked the walk).
Hydrangea? That looks an awful lot like the plant from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” if you ask me. Or maybe the one from the Star Trek episode that shoots Spock in the chest. Just sayin’.
😉
My “killing fields” are doing well this year too. Topsy Turvy planters are fantastic for tomatoes. My “killing fields” are looking like the “Little Shop of Horrors” this year.
Ah, what fun to talk something other than politics once in a while. Did you know your baby blue can be changed to baby pink? Just change the pH of the soil(though it’s easier to do in a container than in the ground). Check it out: http://www.hydrangeashydrangeas.com/colorchange.html
Lace cap hydrangeas. Have many in Connecticut.
Nice work there Mr. Greenjeans! LOL Unfortunately for us, the deer by the creek in the woods behind our home love hydrangeas and thus we have to make do with with our solitary beauty out on the second story deck off the family room. Nice change of pace with the garden post. Makes me wonder what other hobbies you enjoy.
I gave up gardening several years ago after I realized I was paying an effective rate of $8 or $9 a pound for non-organic tomatoes. The price for my watermelon was “infinite” as the blackbirds and squirrels ruined the entire crop before I could harvest one. That’s fine for the government but not for private industry.
But I am glad others enjoy gardening and have some success with it.
You see a lot of these on Cape Cod where the climate and the soil must be salubrious for them since they are quite showy and a nice addition to summer on the Cape.
Oh yes, I have 2 of those and 2 white oak leaf hydrangeas as well that I put in about 10 years ago and they all do very well. I ordered them from mail order catalogs. I am still partial to my regular hydrangeas but they get killed by the heat & lack of water in July.
I gave up on my gardening kick about 5 years ago when it finally dawned on me that we only had 2-3 weeks of decent gardening weather each year.
There is nothing like nature.