{"id":3373,"date":"2021-04-19T06:23:52","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T14:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3373"},"modified":"2021-04-19T06:23:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T14:23:52","slug":"what-do-you-do-with-a-blue-hydrangea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/what-do-you-do-with-a-blue-hydrangea\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do You Do With A Blue Hydrangea?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hydrangea<\/a> <\/strong>There are some tunes that stick in your head, sometimes for weeks.\u00a0 That happened to me recently with the old sea chantey, \u201cWhat do we do with a drunken sailor?\u201d \u00a0The song isn\u2019t as common as it was a generation or two ago, possibly owing to its bawdy lyrics, but is still widely known.\u00a0 The first verse goes as follows,<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWhat do we do with a drunken sailor?<\/em><\/p>\n

What do we do with a drunken sailor?<\/em><\/p>\n

What do we do with a drunken sailor?<\/em><\/p>\n

Early in the morning!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The refrain, which punctuates the numerous verses, is<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWay hey and up she rises<\/em><\/p>\n

Way hey and up she rises<\/em><\/p>\n

Way hey and up she rises<\/em><\/p>\n

Early in the morning!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The song was coursing through my brain last weekend when I was out in the garden and facing an annual chore that I never relish\u2014pruning the three big blue hydrangeas along the boundary fence.<\/p>\n

I love the blue hydrangeas, which are the old fashioned, \u201cmophead\u201d variety, \u2018Nikko Blue\u2019.\u00a0 They were also my late husband\u2019s favorite.\u00a0 In early summer, when the shrubs adorn themselves with scores of sky-blue flowerheads, they are glorious.\u00a0 They are much less alluring in spring, when they are bristling with dead wood and the remnants of last year\u2019s blossoms.\u00a0 To start the hydrangeas\u2019 metamorphosis from pitiful to beautiful, you have to do spring pruning.<\/p>\n

As I was applying my loppers to the first shrub, it occurred to me that \u201cWhat do we do with a drunken sailor\u201d has the same number of syllables as \u201cWhat do you do with a blue hydrangea?\u201d\u00a0 The old sea chantey transformed itself into a horticultural anthem:\u201cWhat do you do with a blue hydrangea?<\/em><\/p>\n

What do you do with a blue hydrangea?<\/em><\/p>\n

What do you do with a blue hydrangea?<\/em><\/p>\n

Early in the springtime!<\/em><\/p>\n

Way, hey and up it rises,<\/em><\/p>\n

Way hey and up it rises,<\/em><\/p>\n

Way hey and up it rises,<\/em><\/p>\n

Early in the springtime<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The syllables worked and so did I, lopping away with a much lighter heart.\u00a0 As I grabbed the dead wood out of the plants\u2019 centers and lopped it off, a second verse formed in my mind, starting with, \u201cTrim dead wood with a trusty lopper.\u201d\u00a0 This made the dead wood procedure go much faster.<\/p>\n

\u2018Nikko Blue\u2019 hydrangeas bloom on \u201cold\u201d wood, meaning that the previous season\u2019s growth produces the current season\u2019s flowers.\u00a0 If you trim off the nascent buds on an old-fashioned hydrangea in the spring, you will eliminate blooms for the year.\u00a0 Another verse formed in my mind\u2014\u201cWatch for buds as you cut the branches\u201d.<\/p>\n

Singing that as I went about the task may have annoyed the neighbors who were setting up for a barbecue on the other side of the fence, but it reminded me of that crucial hydrangea caveat.\u00a0 I was helped by the fact that right now it is easy to tell the fresh green buds from the old dead wood and last fall\u2019s desiccated flower remnants.<\/p>\n

After the three hydrangeas were pruned and cleaned up, it was time to rake away the winter debris that covered the ground around them.\u00a0 Another verse came to mind\u2014\u201cRake the base to remove detritus\u201d.\u00a0 I had to repeat the new verse numerous times before all of that detritus was gone, but the job went faster because of it.<\/p>\n

Spring gardening also means renewing mulch applications.\u00a0 Once the ground around my hydrangeas was clear, it was time to lug the many bags of cedar mulch necessary to cover the area around the bases of the plants.\u00a0 I like cedar because it smells wonderful, degrades slowly and deters both weeds and pests.\u00a0 I don\u2019t particularly like lugging the bags, but in the absence of burly helpers, the chore falls to me.\u00a0 I made it easier with one last verse\u2014\u201cMulch the ground with a coat of wood chips\u201d.<\/p>\n

The best part of any onerous gardening chore is relaxing once it is finished.\u00a0 Lugging the bags of mulch made it necessary to do that relaxing with a heating pad on my back.\u00a0 As the ache abated, I adapted the last verse of \u201cWhat do we do with a drunken sailor\u201d to suit the occasion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what you do with a blue hydrangea!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s what you do with a blue hydrangea!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s what you do with a blue hydrangea!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Early in the springtime!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are some tunes that stick in your head, sometimes for weeks.\u00a0 That happened to me recently with the old sea chantey, \u201cWhat do we do with a drunken sailor?\u201d \u00a0The song isn\u2019t as common as it was a generation or two ago, possibly owing to its bawdy lyrics, but is still widely known.\u00a0 The … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[813,85,627,622,81,1867],"class_list":["post-3373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-garden-humor","tag-garden-maintenance","tag-hydrangea-macrophylla","tag-hydrangeas","tag-pruning","tag-spring-garden-clean-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3375,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions\/3375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}