My Garden's Got the Blues (And I Love It!)
When I looked around the garden last week it suddenly hit me. Despite the fact that I am always hearing how hard it is to find good blue flowers for the garden I sure had a lot of blue in bloom.
I didn't plan it. Oh, I've picked up the odd plant with blue flowers here and there, a few are leftovers from previous years which dropped seeds that resurrected themselves this year . The birds must have planted some - or they escaped from a nearby garden. And some are plants that are actually blooming out of season for some odd reason.
For instance, I had one sky blue delphinium in glorious bloom until about two days ago. Despite careful deadheading the rest quit over a month ago. But this one brave spire stood up and just kept on flowering in the midst of a jungle of 'Carmencita' castor beans (Ricinus comunis) - reminding me once more of how good a cool color like blue can look against deep burgundy or purple.
In another spot by the gazebo a lone blue ranunculus started to flower in as true a blue as I've seen - looking lovely against the silver and burgundy Japanese painted ferns that I had planted there. The rest of the ranunculus stopped weeks ago, defeated, I suspect, by the serious lack of rainfall we endured this year.
And then there is the geranium 'Johnson' Blue'. I have been very good about deadheading this year, and it rewards me with at least a blossom or two all season. Borage, with its starry blue flowers that are too shy to look up sprang up under the arbor where I have thrice tried to get Heavenly Blue morning glories to bloom and re-seed. They bloom but always too late for reseeding. The borage must think of itself as a stand-in.
In the midst of the rose garden a giant gentian whose proper name has long ago been forgotten is covered in silvery blue. I keep meaning to move it to some place where it can be admired more easily - we rarely spend much time looking at the rose garden now that its glory days are over. And then there is the amazing shrub clematis that I planted years ago and forgot about. It spent a few years as an underachiever but this year was exciting from the very first bud of late spring (it has gorgeous buds!) to the bell-shaped upside down flowers that it is still putting out in September. It hasn't even paused for a breather.
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