Oh, my blue hydrangea...

Hydrangea, starting to turn blue., a photo by Leenechan on Flickr.

I'm still not sure which cultivar this plant is. We received it as a root cutting several years ago. It looks like Nikko Blue to me. I had always thought we had alkaline soil, but that didn't explain why our hydrangea was so blue (acid soil produces blue hydrangea, alkaline produces pink). It turns out the soil around this shrub has a pH of 5.5. Pretty acid. I think that's because in CT we get a lot of acid rain. There are two gutters draining rain water into that area...

This is only the beginning of the color show. This hydrangea is so beautiful at its peak that you'd never think that it started out as a cutting in a plastic baggie, and was ripped out of the ground by accident three separate times!

Mama Robin sits on her nest most of the time now, occasionally flying off into the yard for a snack. I would take a photo of her but I don't want to disturb the nest. I heard that the whole business about birds abandoning their young because they smell humans around their nest is completely false, but I'm sure that no bird appreciates a flash bulb popping in their eyes. XD