I think I've mentioned before, maybe a hundred times, that I love hydrangeas.  There are all kinds of varieties and different colors. 

 My favorite is blue - but you have to keep the soil at a special acidic ph level to get this color.  Although I treated my flowers this year very carefully with the right stuff, I think I have discovered why they never did turn blue.  I have my hose hooked up to the house, instead of an outside water pump. We have well water, which has to be treated with water softener so that the bathtub, sink, and toilet don't turn all orange from a calcium build up.  I think that this affected my ability to get the soil

condition right for the color blue. 

So, instead of blue, I got a lot of pink.  But that's o.k.  their still beautiful.

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I couldn't help but make it a "photo moment" when I picked them. 

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I placed some in a bucket filled with water and let them float in it.  Then I arranged some around

the bucket.

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I decided to put a basket of freshly picked corn from our garden on the same table.  When I asked

Rachel what she thought of my photo lay-out, she thought it wouldn't be complete with out her kittie

included.

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Well, if the kittie should be in it, then surely the dog, and my children playing in the background should be, too.

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I didn't get blue, but I enjoyed them just the same.  And now during the upcoming long winter, I can

still enjoy them through my pictures.

Join Mary for a lot of great show and tells....

  I've always had a love for lilacs.  In our area, there are a lot of old

 farmhouses that have these really big lilacs.  Every time I would

drive by them, I would just oooohhhh and ahhhhh.  Finally, a few years ago, I planted my

very own lilac bush.  When spring time came this year, everyone had lilacs. Everyone,

that is, except for me.    Did I plant the wrong kind of lilac bush?  How come

everyone has flowers but me? 

.

About a week or two later, when everyone else's lilacs were fading away, (this is in June), I noticed that my lilacs were coming into full bloom.   I found out  that there are different kinds of lilacs,

and there is a late bloomer variety.  

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The story doesn't end there.  Right next to my pretty bloomer, is another lilac bush

that did not bloom.  Again,  I thought I'd planted the wrong kind of lilac.  But, just as soon as the one pictured began to fade, the one next to it bloomed!  I guess I have "late lilacs" and "late-late lilacs"!

Now, if I can just get an early bloomer (and maybe an "on-time" one )  -  I'll be in Lilac Heaven! 

(Visit Mary for more Show and Tell's)

Show and Tell is hosted by Mary at Canada Girl - go to her blog and check her blog out and others participating in S&T - it will be interesting, I promise!

 I used this book to plan my herb garden this year.

 Along with my herbs, I planted a variety of tomatoes, bell peppers - green, red, and yellow, some lettuce varieties, cilantro, and beets.

  It was so enjoyable to come out to my garden and pick those really small tomatoes and then eat them with fresh herbs straight off the vine.  The mint varieties were especially awesome with tomatoes!

 I especially enjoyed harvest time this year.  I had looked forward to this moment.   After cutting my

herbs, I tied them in bundles, marking them with their name, and tying a pretty pastel ribbon around them. 

Then I brought them up to the house and took pictures of my beautiful herbs. 

 I laid them on my wicker table, placed a pretty apron beneath them as a backdrop, and posed my plants.

This is Golden Sage:

 Lemon Basil:

 Cinnamon Basil:

 Lovage:

 Peppermint:

 Purple Sage:

 Santolina:

 Spearmint:

 French Lavender:

 Salad Burnett:

Chocolate Mint:

 Peppermint:

Lemon Verbena: 

I brought my herbs into the screened-in porch and laid them gently on my old Tappan stove.

My little one enjoying looking at mommy's herbs (and posing for her picture).

 While were here, let's sit down and rest.

 It's so peaceful in here - I often come here to pray - in the early mornings when the sun hasn't even come up yet. 

The screens keep mosquitoes out, yet, I feel as if I'm outside, with the gentle breeze and the sounds of the crickets, the owl, and bull frogs bellowing from the lilly pond. 

As much as I loved my herb garden this year, I can't imagine not mentioning my raspberries.  Have you ever grown these?  If not, you must plan to try planting raspberries next year!  They are easy-keepers.  After they have got their root system going, I rarely water them.  They give me berries all summer long, and into the late fall.   The neatest thing about them is that they have undershoots that spring up here and there and everywhere and start new raspberry plants all summer long.  They will continue to multiply raspberry bushes all on their own, with no help from you or me.  Just give them plenty of soil without grass or weeds to do their job and they will give you buckets of raspberries.  This isn't just for us country folks, by the way.  My brother who lives 20 minutes away from downtown Chicago,  harvests two full buckets of berries per day, all summer long.

It's so sweet to see the little ones go help themselves every morning to raspberries and strawberries.   (The strawberries surround the raspberries and they also give fruit all summer and autumn long.)

We are never without berries around here.  All through the Black Walnut Forest, there are bushes and bushes and bushes of wild blackberries (huge) and wild raspberries.  There are about a dozen mulberry trees.  

I have just planted six blueberry bushes  -  hopefully - next year I will be sharing pictures with you of beautiful blueberries, if only a few!   And the only thing I don't have a picture of is the dozens of french lavender that I planted along the picket fence.  Now why didn't I take a picture of that?!   Another thing for next year.

I love roses almost as much as hydrangaes.  I ordered these last year from Jackson and Perkins off the internet.  They are climbing roses.  I have a picture inside my mind that someday they will twist and turn and climb all over my white picket fence. 

I have a love affair with hydrangeas. I have been known to buy a magazine just because the cover has a picture of a hydrangea on it. Any time I find pictures of them, I tear out the page, save it, and put it in a special notebook of mine. Just this month of Martha Stewart’s magazine, she had a cover with beautiful hydrangeas on it. I bought it.

I’ve tried to grow them in past summers, but somehow I didn’t have them positioned right to the sun. Too much? Too little? I wasn’t sure. All I knew is that they died and they didn’t make it. Maybe it was the kitties that played on them that did them in.

But I didn’t give up on the thought of having hydrangeas because I was still in love with them. I had bought some for my mom, approximately five years ago, and hers have done fantastic. They are huge now, and are positively beautiful. So this year, I decided to give it another try.

This picture was taken when they were at their very best. They’ve since been struggling. Hydrangeas must have an acidic soil for them to be blue, otherwise they will be pink. I have been treating the soil with a special product to produce the desired effect. I haven’t got quite the hang of it yet though, because they’ve all lost their blueness. Some are pink, others are lavender (kind of pretty), and several are losing all their color.

It’s a battle that’s worth fighting. I’ll just keep trying until I get my own hydrangeas that are worthy to grace a cover of a Martha Stewart magazine.