Muddy Paws: I Take What I Can Get

I know it's been a while since my last post -- and I'll admit there hasn't been a lot of gardening here. I've been content with some watering, weeding, and deadheading early in the day and surveying the garden for likes and dislikes in the evening. The rest of my time has been spent finishing up the school year with the kids, completing some knitting projects, and preparing for our family trip to Norway next weekend.

The garden is in a lull right now. The purples and pinks and whites of spring have given way to varying shades and textures of green and lots of yellow. I try to avoid yellow (it makes the summer garden feel hotter to me), but many of the flowers that do well in our hot, sticky summers are yellow or orange. Hopefully, in a few weeks my Costa Rican salvias, Oriental lilies and Russian sage will be providing some respite to the incessant yellow.

I do have a non-yellow spot in the garden -- the hydrangeas. Now, I am not a big fan of the blue. I like a pink or purple hydrangea. In previous years I've added lime to the soil around them in order to get them to tend away from blue but to no avail. One year, when I added lime throughout the summer, I was able to get some purple. When do I add it? How much? I could never quite figure it out and so this year, I did nothing. And look ...