Hydrangea

Many are the responsibilities the home gardener tacitly assumes when first he sets his seeds into the soil. Depending on the size and composition of his little farm, a large selection of tools and machines may be required to complete these tasks.

My gardens (one in Whittier and one in Cerritos, center of the universe) combined have a relatively large area, and host myriad varieties of plants. Accordingly, diverse tools are required for tending to the particular needs of each crop, and I have made several trips to gardening supply stores around the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area to acquire the needed apparatuses. One popular stop for both plants and tools is the Armstrong Garden Center in Torrance (just a couple blocks from the SAT institute at which I work), on Crenshaw Boulevard.

The center is composed primarily of two sections: indoor, which houses seeds, house plants, gloves, hats, rakes, hoes, and other gardening apparatuses; and outdoor, where the flowers, vegetables, trees, shrubs, and herbs are grown. On a typical day, a walk from the indoor area to the outdoor is redolent of Dorothy's passage from two-toned Kansas into the full-scale technocolor of Munchkin Land. As one moves outside, the drab, stale interior gives way to the sensuous, controlled explosions of color provided by the annuals and perennials. A few wind chimes singing their Aeolian reverie in the breeze help add to the surreal mystique as one passes into this local Oz.

(Photograph courtsey of JT Hayashi.)

To my surprise, I was met by a barrage of color today inside Armstrong Garden Center. It's the season for hydrangea, and there was a large selection of exquisite specimens for sale. The blue hydrangea, with their intensely colored cerulean flowers--a shade that only this flower can acheive--were especially comely. The color of some petals, transitioning from a creamy white into a middling periwinkle, was not quite ripe; nonetheless, the majority of the plants were in full bloom and providing a fetching display of springtime loveliness.

As our own hydrangea bush at home (of the pink variety, with vivid magenta and fuchsia blossoms) is barely waking from its winter hybernation, my suspicion is that these lovely plants were grown in a green house, or else otherwise unnaturally induced to bloom so early. In any event, I was grateful to the faithful gardner who roused these plants from their slumber and educed their sapphirine hues.

In tribute to the hydrangea, I located the following poem online. The original is in German, but there are several nice translations to be found as well.

Blue Hydrangea, by Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Bernhard Frank [original in Deutsch]
Like in old cans of paint the last green hue,
these leaves are sere and rough and dull-complected
behind the blossom clusters in which blue
is not so much displayed as it's reflected;

They do reflect it imprecise and teary,
as though they'd rather have it go away,
and just like faded, once-blue stationery,
they're tinged with yellow, violet and gray;

As in an often laundered children's smock,
cast off, its usefulness now all but over,
one senses running down a small life's clock.

Yet suddenly the blue revives, it seems,
and in among these clusters one discovers
a tender blue rejoicing in the green.