Hydrangea blooms mean autumn approaches

While we were in Brugge, I was really struck with how pretty this planting combination was in one of the museum gardens. The old brick wall had a beech hedge planted along it with a row of pink hydrangeas in the front. It really so impressive and the aging blooms of the hydrangea was taking on the color of the old bricks. The hydrangeas have done really well this year in Holland because of our wet summer weather. They have been riotous with flower. But we still had not had our own Pee Gee Hydrangea start to flower as of that time. Each weekend as we drove to the cottage, we expected to see them in full flower since most things seem to bloom earlier this year. All through the last weeks of July we anticipated these blooms to come early but nothing. This type of hydrangea blooms in August and September. It symbolizes to us that autumn is starting. As our blooms start to age, they become a pretty shade of pink that harolds in the start of fall.....

We arrived this past Friday evening to see that ours had finally exploded into flower while we were gone the past two weekends. The pretty bushes were arched heavily with the weight of the blossoms they must hold. This year, they are doing so well that it is difficult to walk the pathway around the side of the cottage to the back garden. Now I am looking forward to watching these creamy white blossoms go pink. If you enlarge the photos, you may even see the hints of color there.

Blue Hydrangea
Just like the last green in a colour pot

So are these leaves, withered and wrecked

Behind the flower umbels, which reflect

A hue of blue only, more they do not.

Reflections are tear-stained, inaccurate,

As if they were about to cease,

And like old blue notepaper sheets

They wear some yellow, grey and violet,

Washed-out like on a children's apron,

Outworn and now no more in use:

We contemplate a small life's short duration.

But suddenly some new blue seemingly is seen

In just one umbel, and we muse

Over a moving blue delighting in the green.

Rainer Maria Rilke, July 1906, Paris
Translation © by Guntram Deichsel