This Year's Bumper Crop

 

Happy Wednesday!

Most of us have flowers that we associate with our childhood.  For me, there are many flowers I loved but one certainly one of the ones I think of most often are hydrangeas.

My paternal grandmother, Nana Elsie, had two lovely Nikko bushes in her garden and I was fascinated by the true blue of the flowers.  Her bushes were so big that they became a wonderful part of our games like Hide and Seek and Tag.   Years later when I started my own garden, my maternal grandmother gave me a cutting of her own hydrangea bush.  

"I got the cutting from your Nana Elsie's bush," Nana Betty told me.  It's right that you have a bush that belonged to both of us."

This year I had concerns about my hydrangeas.  They did not bloom well last year and I knew it was because of the weather.

One of my gardening mentor's explained the problem to me years ago.  "The old Nikko bushes were very susceptible to temperatures that fluctuate between cold and warm.  It only takes one good cold snap in the spring to destroy the flowers for the year."

Some of the hydrangeas bloom no matter what the weather.  Like the Oak Leaf hydrangea that has begun to bloom:

But what is most heartening to me this year is that my old Nikkos are full of bloom.  I have quite a few bushes that I propagated from the original cutting.

Hydrangea flowers are believed to mean abundance, heartfelt emotion, gratitude, and even boastfulness.  I have to think the boastfulness is because when the bush has a good bloom, it outshines just about everything else in the garden.

The flowering bushes were cultivated in ancient Japan and are celebrated in that culture to this day.  Ajisai (the Japanese word for Hydrangea) even is celebrated in special festivals.  

But fossils show us that these lovely flowers were in North America and Asia 40-65 million years ago.

A good article and photos about these fossils can be found here. 

Do you have any wonderful memories about hydrangeas?

Flower Friday is two days away!  Please email me any photos you may wish to share from your garden by emailing me at allentownquilter@gmail.com

Have a safe and happy day!