Oak Leaf Hydrangeas (Quercifolia)

Nature can be rough on everyone, but especially on gardeners who expect things, like the plants we put in our gardens looking like the pictures in catalogues. Not enough that we deal with drought one week, deluge the next, wild temperature swings, hard frost just as the peach blossoms come into full bloom, you name it. Nature giveth, and Nature taketh away. As with this summer. Nature gave us more than enough rain – not steady mind you, but in monsoon-then-drought-then-monsoon rotation. I’m not really complaining – it’s VERY bad juju to ever, EVER complain about the rain -- but I watched the farmers struggle to get into the fields when they most needed to, watched the onions drown, the tomato blight grow apace, and the raspberries rot on the canes from rampant fungus.

But there’s usually an upside – like forest fires prompting long-dormant tree seedlings (I think long-leaf pines for example) to germinate then sprout. This year, for the first time the Oak Leaf Hydrangeas (Quercifolia ‘Alba and ‘Ailsa’), the ones I planted years ago in large part for their fall color, the ones that sported dung-colored leaves autumn after autumn, the ones that convinced me that catalogues lied (like they did with the Washington Centennial Azaleas when they said they’d thrive here), this year, they’re gorgeous. The morning sun glints through them, and they glow orange and crimson, saffron and scarlet and gold and burnt sienna and a burnished, purply red.

Likewise the young Autumn Glory Maple (Acer Autumn Glory) in front of my daughter’s house. The little beast is doing its darndest to live up to its name, despite its currently diminutive size. And much of it can be credited to the abundance of rain that helped feed the tomato blight, fungus-up the raspberries and grow mildew over virtually every little thing that didn’t move fast enough. But the leaves. Are. Glorious. Native taketh away, but some years, Nature also giveth.