My hydrangeas are blooming beautifully. As I’ve enjoyed them, I’ve been thinking about how I should never assume that I know how the story will end.
Hydrangeas are my favorite flower, especially the big Nikko Blues, and each year I look forward to hydrangea season. I love to cut big bouquets for my house.
This year, I was convinced I would have no hydrangeas. Last November, I hired an experienced landscaper to help me prune my bushes and get my perennial beds ready for winter. I asked him not to prune my hydrangeas. Nikko blues bloom on old wood, and the buds for next year’s flowers are set by August or September. If you prune them at that point, you are in danger of pruning off most of next year’s flowers. I had already cut the hydrangea bushes back in July.
The landscape gardener got to work, and two hours later I was horrified to see that he had aggressively pruned my largest hydrangea bush. He looked sheepish and said, “I know: you told me not to cut the hydrangeas back, but I forgot until I was almost finished with this bush. I left the others alone.” I was disappointed, but I comforted myself with the knowledge that three of the other five bushes were large enough to bloom.
Then in April, we had a late freeze. My hydrangea bushes were well-leafed-out by this point, and the tenderest leaves on the ends of the stems were all brown and frost-bitten. The only bush that did not get nipped was the one the landscaper had pruned so severely. (It’s located in a sheltered spot.) I concluded that I would have no hydrangea flowers this year. Since April, every time I walked through the yard, I felt sad that there would be no hydrangea blossoms this year.
Except that I do. Not only did the frost-bitten bushes recover, shedding the brown leaves and sending out new green ones, but they are blooming. And that severely pruned bush? It has a half dozen perfect blooms on it. I don’t have quite as many blossoms as I’ve had in the best years, but the bushes are beautiful.
The great hydrangea surprise of 2021 has been a good reminder. Too often, I conclude that I know how things are going to turn out, and too often, I conclude that the end of the story will be sad, disappointing, or downright disastrous. I’ve written before about my tendency to imagine the worst possible outcome in any situation. Once again, I thought I knew how the story would end, and once again, I was wrong. I wasted more than a little bit of energy being sad about my hydrangeas instead of waiting for nature to do her magic.
What about you? Have you assumed that you knew the story was going to end badly when in fact, things turned out just fine?