Hydrangea Summer

"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" -- Steven Wright

The air is changing here. Mornings are cooler, the sun rises later and sets earlier — harbingers of things to come. Before we head into fall, it feels important to note one special aspect of this summer. Something happened with the hydrangeas. They bloomed in profusion! You can see my hydrangea plant above, festooned with blossoms after many summers with scant or no blossoms at all. (Yes, I could have taken a picture of just the hydrangea bush, but that would have left out the black-eyed Susans that seed themselves all over my lawn. If there is a flower with a happier face than a black-eyed Susan, I don’t know what it is. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of that dose of happiness.)

Anyway, hydrangeas. Their prolific displays even made national news: Why Hydrangeas Are Blooming Spectacularly in the Northeast This Summer - The New York Times (nytimes.com) The New York Times says:

Horticulturists, gardening enthusiasts and tourists from far away have all taken note: This is a banner year for hydrangeas from New Hampshire all the way down to the Mid-Atlantic states.

With their vibrant orbs of colorful clustered petals, hydrangeas are a quintessential attraction for many towns on the Eastern Seaboard. After a rainy fall and mild winter, this summer has seen an explosion of blooms.

“This might be the best year for hydrangeas that I’ve seen in at least the last decade,” Greyson Keller, a gardener who owns a landscaping business called the Garden Group in Nantucket, Mass., said.

I don’t know why the New York Times neglected to mention Maine. Obviously, their reporter didn’t come look at my yard. It’s a long way from New York to Maine, I guess, especially when there are sexier stories to cover than prolific hydrangea blossoms.

In previous blog posts I have confessed my lack of gardening prowess. I like to think I could be a good gardener. But, so far, it’s just not my area. That’s not for lack of trying. In my defense, many of my gardening failures have resulted from pests rather than from my ineptitude. The deer roam freely here. There’s no hunting in town, and the deer have no non-human predators to keep them in check. A couple of years ago, the house across the street was having a huge estate sale. There were cars lined up and down the street. People were coming and going, hoisting refrigerators onto trucks, corralling their little children, chatting with one another, unrolling rugs to take a look, rolling them back up and heaving them into car trunks, and generally taking over our usually quiet neighborhood. A guest who was visiting me that day happened to look out my front window just when a beautiful doe came sauntering down the street. The doe stopped at the estate sale, observed the commotion, and seemed to say to herself, “Hmm, a yard sale. Do I need anything? Nah, I guess not.” Then she simply walked away. No flare or warning flick of her white tail. No tail flagging to indicate imminent danger. No leap into the nearby thicket of woods. Fearless! That’s what the deer are here. And if you look at my garden, you will see evidence of just how fearless they are.

Then there are the squirrels. One year I had wonderful, healthy squash vines of various kinds crawling all over the front yard. They were producing glorious, mouthwatering squashes. But you know with squashes, you can’t pick them a few days ahead and ripen them on the counter. No, no, no. You wait to pick them when they are ripe. Well, that’s exactly when the squirrels pick them, too. That summer the squirrels got every single one of my squashes. Just to thumb their noses at me, they chewed up each squash and strewed squash detritus all over the yard.

Then there are the woodchucks. We won’t go into the wrecking ball a woodchuck represents in a garden.

There have been invaders that have surprised me, too, like my neighbor’s chickens who stole across the street one day and ate all the seeds I had just planted. Another time, I discovered what seemed to be a hummingbird drinking nectar from some of my bee balm. No surprise there — hummingbirds love bee balm. But, on closer inspection, I discovered the creature wasn’t a bird at all, but a moth instead. I was transfixed! Until I discovered the hummingbird moth (as it is called) develops into the tomato hornworm. Ravenous tomato hornworms destroyed my tomato plants. (But I learned they provide a tasty feast for the neighbor’s chickens.)

And then there’s me. Nobody will ever nominate me for the local garden tour. I’m pretty sure of that.

Given all my gardening challenges, perhaps you can see why the profusion of blossoms on my hydrangea bush struck me as somewhat miraculous. That lovely plant rocketed to puffy blue-blossom glory all by itself. I did nothing to help or hinder it. Also, nobody ate blossoms or leaves. I marveled and gave thanks.

But then I happened upon that New York Times article and got a bit of a comeuppance. “After a rainy fall and mild winter, this summer has seen an explosion of blooms.” the article professes.

Wait. What? Abundant hydrangea blossoms require a rainy fall and mild winter?

People, I have very decided ideas about weather. Take rain, for example. I’m all in favor of rain — enough rain, but not too much and not too little. When rain falls frequently enough to characterize an entire season as “rainy” (as in the “rainy fall” the Times mentioned in their article), that’s too much rain. If it rains all through the fall, when does one plant one’s bulbs? And, torrential downpours that sweep all the glorious foliage from the trees too soon are criminal, if you ask me.

Then, there’s winter. Even though I won’t win a popularity contest by saying so, I like winter. Proper winter. That means nor’easters. It means temperatures sometimes dipping low enough for my boots to squeak when I walk on packed-down snow. It means weather cold enough to produce light, puffy snow. It means shoveling that same kind of snow. It means wool mittens, hats, and scarves. It means animal tracks across my snow-covered yard. It means a snowy weasel greeting us when we open the garage door. It means the hush that descends after a snowstorm (and before everyone starts their snowblowers). In my mind, all of those things (except for the snowblower racket) are good — and none of them constitutes a “mild winter.” None of them adds up to the kind of winter weather my hydrangea bush apparently likes.

It’s a good thing my hydrangea bush put on such a show this summer, even though I don’t like the same kind of winter weather it does. Those beautiful blue blossoms lifted my spirits more than I can say. So, here I am confessing to the benefits of not always getting the kind of weather I like.

I reluctantly admit it is a good thing that not everything goes my way. Because if everything always went my way, I would gain an outsized sense of my own importance. Moreover, what about things going your way sometimes? What about people all over the world clamoring for things to work out as they desire? What about all living things with their various needs and desires? What about my hydrangea bush whose needs are at odds with my weather preferences?

One of my friends hates, hates, hates winter, but she loves, loves, loves summer. The hotter the better. We are exact opposites in that respect. When I see her out walking on a hot day, I call out to her, “Hey, you’re getting one of your days!” When she sees me crunching through the snow on a cold winter day, she celebrates that I am getting the kind of weather I love. I treasure that little repartee my neighbor and I share, and it is only possible because we are different from each other. She gets a little bit of what she likes, I get a little bit of what I like. My hydrangea bush gets the weather it likes, I enjoy the resulting blossoms that I like. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Give and take.

“You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” Steven Wright quips. Indeed. That’s how it should be, and it’s one good thing.

Love,

Sylvia