Hydrangea Heaven...

Greetings from The Perch! I hope that you are well.

I am sure that I don't know what Heaven looks like, or if I will ever be lucky enough to see it. But in my mind's eye, if there are any flowers at all up there, they will be hydrangeas. And they will be blue, the color of the North Carolina sky on a clear summer day.

We have been getting a lot of rain this past week. The other night there was a tornado watch which fortunately did not amount to much. But it stopped raining for a little while as I was getting ready to cook dinner, and I noticed that the sun came out slightly and made my garden look kind of pretty. I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures.

Our blue hydrangeas are in full bloom now. (We have some others that will bloom a little bit later.) They are huge and gorgeous, and of various names. I do not even remember what some of them are as they have been moved some and added to over the past few years. All I know is that nothing is as beautiful. In about a month the heat will get to them. The blossoms will fade, and the leaves will get spotty and wilt during the hot afternoons. They will bloom again at the end of the summer, but the blossoms will be small and not as striking. So I have taken the following pictures, which will be the only memory of these early summer beauties.

The ones in these pictures grow behind

our screened back porch...

You can see how big some of the blossoms are next to my hand...

The taller ones between them are a different species,

and will bloom later...

Can you tell that these are my favorite? Do you have any favorites in your garden?