Hydrangeas
Spring is coming and today was one of those incredibly confusing days where it was too warm to wear a jacket but too chilly to be outside without one. With a glass of water and a 100 calorie Vita-Brownie, I ventured out to my backyard to see what was left behind for us by our home’s previous owners.
Upon first exiting the kitchen, hobbling down five crumbling poured cement steps lined by a rickety old wooden railing, I come to a tiny bordered garden, topped with fat white stones and harboring three not-yet-bloomed hydrangeas. A hydrangea is easy to spot, even in the winter, and I have to admit that I’m less than thrilled to have so many of them in our yard. While I hate the idea of having these bushes on my property, I’m not keen on tearing them up, either. After all, they are living, healthy, and I’ve even saved three from a vine that had wound itself up and down them for what had to have been years. I spent one Sunday afternoon about two weeks ago unwinding the vine from these hydrangea bushes, which I claim to hate, and felt satisfied that I did it. I even uprooted the unwanted vine, but for what? The hydrangeas are coming out just as soon as we buy a birdbath and set up my herb garden. Birdbaths and herb gardens are much more appropriate off-the-kitchen things than hydrangeas, after all.
So what is it about hydrangeas that I dislike so much? I know it comes from my childhood, and while I can’t be sure, I think it was my first encounter with the physical manifestations of pollution.
Along the back corner of the house I grew up in, we had a hydrangea. In the springtime, its stalks grew tiny little leaves that bushed into large green leaves while simultaneously flourishing globes of pink petals that remained through to the end of summer. While watering the Japanese cherry blossom and rows of impatiens and marigolds, I also took great care in watering this hydrangea. I had my sister’s boom box playing Spice Girls and No Doubt and never thought twice about the bush I would come to despise.
One day it occurred to me that more petals in nature, on any flower, seemed to be pink than blue so I asked my parents why our hydrangea was pink and the many hydrangeas along the side of our neighbors’ house were blue. They informed me that it was the level of acidity in the soil that determined if a hydrangea would bloom pink or blue. But there was no more than what…a ten foot difference across our shared driveway from my family’s pink hydrangea to their blue hydrangeas.
Then it started to make sense. My neighbors were never the most social but they were plenty friendly and we had many lengthy conversations post-grocery shopping and other accidental encounters. But one day when I was out watering the flowers, I found a dead fish skeleton next to our pond. I’d had trouble seeing the coy fish in our backyard pond for some time but attributed that to their being so hot and needing the shade of the plants. They had to have been fine—after all, the food all appeared to have been eaten every day within hours of sprinkling the surface with these tiny pellets. But that day when I found the fish skeleton, I suppose enough had been enough.
“I’ve spent so much God damn money, those filthy people need to clean up!”
That was my Dad and he was referring to my neighbors’ infestation of skunks and raccoons. It was a raccoon living under their unkempt house that was pawing through our pond at night and feasting on the inhabitants: countless coy and I’m not sure if the frog hopped away to safety or if it and its tadpoles also fell victim to the nocturnal killer.
Over the next year or so our puppy, Macks, came to enjoy relieving himself on our pink hydrangea. As time went on, the pink hydrangea turned a purple-blue color, and my parents’ point was made.
The level of acidity. My neighbors’ dirty house with windows that were never opened, a lawn not cared for, and rodents who ate our beloved fish, also bred hydrangea bushes that were blue, while a slab of pavement away was my family’s single, pink hydrangea. Until my dog peed all over it.
Maybe I’m nervous to see what color our hydrangeas will be. What if ours bloom an acidic blue? Is it better to rip them out before finding out of offering these innocent plants a chance to thrive with new owners who rescue them from killer vines?
A Post-Grad's Journey Towards Domestication 