Nature is too good to me. Despite total neglect, I am treated to beautiful azaleas and rhododendrons every year in the spring, and in June, this hydrangea plant blooms without fail. I used to tend an herb garden, but it's gone now that I've had Saint for a year--the path he takes down the hill to chase a ball went right through it, and although I enjoyed the smell of rosemary or oregano that filled the air when he bruised the leaves, I gave up on the garden. I don't water anything outside, either, nor do I fertilize. I prune, but never when it's most advantageous to do so. Mostly all I do is try to keep the place from looking abandoned.
I can never remember whether hydrangeas are blue in acid soil and pink in alkaline soil, or vice versa. Whichever kind of soil makes hydrangeas blue, the soil by the northwest corner of my house is evidently that kind of soil. Voici my hydrangea, blooming in a scruffy, untended spot:
Hydrangeas always blow me away when I see them while traveling. They're so totally alien-seeming (since I'm a desert rat) and just magnificent. I envy you being able to let your garden do its own thing, as opposed to the hardscrabble excuse for a garden I've got out here.
I can't really let the place do its own thing; it'd be choked with vines and weeds in no time. I have to go out and prune and pull weeds and cut stuff back. It's just a different kind of maintenance.