Our Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangeas Are Turning (Later this year)

Just like last year - albeit a month or so later - our Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangeas out front are turning.  Here's a similar photo that I posted during our first Summer in Downers with the blooms of the hydrangeas outside of our front porch.   We have four Vanilla Strawberry plants right in front of the porch.  You can see them all from earlier this Summer in the photo on this post.  What's most striking is that by June these had barely started to leaf out.  And with the red/pink color just emerging in late August/early September, these are a full month behind where they were in 2017. 

We initially were going to put Annabelle's here, but after talking with Nat's Mom and our landscape designer, they decided to put these pinkish ones in the same place.  I'm really glad we went that route.  Our Annabelle's are doing way, way better - with HUGE blooms - compared to these Vanilla Strawberry variety.  But, with time and a little bit of attention, I'm thinking that we'll be wowed with the size of these blooms, too.  I didn't feed any of our hydrangeas this year, so *that* feels like a miss in terms of gardening this year.  This piece says to apply a slow-release fertilizer early in the year (May), so it seems that feeding them now isn't the right idea either.

Progress every day out in the garden.