7/3/09 American as the Plants in My Backyard

It's been a really nice day today. The kind of nice where the sun is shining and the sky is blue, and the air is just the perfect temperature for summer, but without all the humidity. So nice in fact that I spent a lot of the day lounging around in the hammock and enjoying the flowers that are blooming around the back yard.

And as I was sitting there, swinging in my hammock and enjoying my pretty flowers, I was like, You know what? I have some very patriotic flowers here. These flowers would be the perfect way to celebrate the Fourth of July. And really, what says God Bless America more than me spending too much money at my my local garden center?

Exactly.

First off, representing the blue in the old Red, white, and blue are my hydrangeas. I have an entire corner of the yard dedicated to hydrangeas because they are some of my favorite flowers. Every few days, I safari my way into the middle of them to find blooms that are hidden either at the bottom of the bush, or in the back by the house. These get snipped off and put in vases around my kitchen. That way I have their pretty color inside and out.

I feed them their acid fertilizer every week so that I can get deep blue flowers, but I have one plant that continues to strive for pink, even with the acid. Here it is below. It actually reminds me of those bags of cotton candy that vendors walk around with at sporting events. You know the ones that are half pink, half blue? This is my cotton candy hydrangea bush. It's not exactly stars and stripes forever, but if you think about it, Cotton candy could be very Fourth of Julyish, don't you think?

The white is represented best by my Rose of Sharon, which is currently busting with white flowers. This is only my second year with this bush, but it's doing very well here, so I think it'll be another banner year for it. I thought it might be cute to see if I had 50 white blossoms to represent the 50 stars, but somewhere around number 19, I was assaulted distracted by a bee and forgot which flower I was on. So just pretend that I have 50 of these blooms all over my bush.

The red is a little harder because 99% of my yard is landscaped in blues and purples and whites, and having a red in the middle of all that would definitely disrupt my color palate. But I do have some really really fuscia gladiolas, and they're kinda, almost, maybe-if-you-turn-your-head-sideways-and-squint red, right?

Not buying the gladiolas? Okay, okay, I understand. How about this bad boy then? I know he's not quite red yet, but he will be in another few days. (He had a lovely brother tomato that was a really beautiful red that I could have taken a picture of, but he became a really delicious tomato sandwich two days ago, so you'll just have to imagine this one instead). This little fella is one of my beefsteak tomatoes, and you can't tell it from the photo, but he's almost the size of a softball. I have beefsteaks, German Queens, Better Boys, and cherry tomatoes, and I find that between the four of them, they cover just about all of my tomato needs. Plus, you know what else is a Fourth of July staple? Hamburgers. And what goes great on a hamburger? A big ol' slice of beefsteak tomato. See? It all works.

So that's my patriotic garden. Showing my Fourth of July pride surrounded by fuscia red, white and blue. The Rose of Sharon hangs out next to my grill, the hydrangeas are in a vase sitting on the counter next to the macaroni salad, and the tomato will be taking a very active role as topping on my Fourth of July hamburger.

Those are definitely colors I can stand behind.