Monday, July 18, 2005
Hydrangeas
As I was driving around town today running errands I noticed hydrangeas are coming into bloom. That seems kind of funny to me. There are a lot of hydrangeas (ajisai) in Japan and they bloom throughout the rainy season, which runs from June until about mid-July. They start out blooming blue and then change colors as the weather gets damper and hotter. By the time they are a faded purple (or maybe it was pink) summer has hit with full force. So, it seems weird seeing that early blue hydrangea in July, smack in the middle of what is our short summer season. They just don't look quite right to me unless they are offset by a concrete block wall and the sound of rain on my umbrella.
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3 comments:
Acid rain?
I'd rather think the color shift happens naturally rather than it being the effect of polluted rain. But I was living not too far away from some awfully big and scary factories in Japan...
When we were in Provincetown a few weekends ago the display of hydrangea blooms was phenominal. There was one house with a front yard filled with variegated blooms from white to pink to purple to blue -- I'd never see such a panoply of colors all within one bush.
Acid rain is an interesting hypothesis. The color of the bloom is deteremined by the acidity of the soil. You can change the bloom color by injecting stuff into the soil around them (or using something like acidic coffee grinds).
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