I photograph hydrangeas for my Hydrangeas Blue blog, for making wedding stationery for my BlueHyd online store, and for use other places I write online.
Recently I added some hydrangea shrubs to my yard and although I didn’t think they would bloom this year, they did!
It’s a wonderful surprise and I’ve been enjoying photographing these pretty hydrangea varieties.
It seems that I was just getting started in my New England garden when I had to leave it. I still visit it in pictures I took in the summer of 2006 and this is one I came across recently.
When we moved into our new home in the northeast we had some of our old schoolmates over to celebrate and one of them brought a Rose of Sharon plant. It was so beautiful with the variegated leaves that it didn’t need to bloom to decorate the garden landscape, but when it did, it produced little pinkish purple flowers (I think).
At some point I added Morning Glory seeds to the garden and the vine wrapped around the Rose of Sharon and when the Morning Glory bloomed it gave the impression that the Rose of Sharon had blue flowers. A pretty effect.
Morning Glory flowers can be beautiful shades of blue, just like the hydrangea, but their flowers only last a day. They will have to be planted each year after the danger of frost – which isn’t until June 1st up here in New Hampshire, so starting them indoors is a good idea. I didn’t realize the importance of starting seeds indoors when I first moved here from Florida.
The vine of the Morning Glory will climb just about anything so plant it near shrubs or even a dead, branching stick stuck into the ground to add interest to the garden.
I did a lot of gardening when I lived in Florida. It really wasn’t much fun in summer – and that is when the weeds would grow like mad of course – and I had just about every kind of southern flower and plant in my large yard. My favorites were the Camellias and Crepe Myrtle, but I also had lots of azaleas under the Oaks and yellow and white Jasmine covering the fence. I lived in that house for 12 years and added more to the yard each year.
The north has it’s own collection of gorgeous flowers that are not seen in the south. Hydrangeas are one such plant. It’s just too hot for many plants to survive that heat and the perennials need a dormant time (in winter) that the southern plants don’t get. At least not to the extent that the northern ones do.
I’ve been trying my hand at drying the blue hydrangeas that grow in the front yard of my rental house. I wrote a page about Hydrangeas and how to dry them, with lots of links, at my Squidoo site – if you are interested. I had one large blossom dry up nicely (in the picture to the right) and just added a few more smaller and darker blue ones to the vase, but my favorite thing to do is photograph them.
I think my pictures turned out better than my attempt at drying. I’ve used them to start a new store (#6) at Zazzle. I’ve sold many blue hydrangea cards and stamps from my main store- Narrow Road Designs, so this is an off shoot of that.
New England's Narrow Road 