Why I Oughta...

This is the third in a series of [garden diary] posts showing off some mid-November 2024 blooms.  One of them (the Disneyland Rose) is expected .  It has bloomed this late each of the past few years.  The Dahlias are a nice surprise.  Since I haven't grown them (in the ground) before, this set of late-blooms on the dahlias is a learning lesson for me .   But....this third one....this is the strange one.   See below for one of our Vanilla Strawberry Panicle Hydrangea that sits in front of our front porch that is FULL of brown, past-their-prime blooms.  And...one, random, out-of-season, small pink bloom.   The shrub is a mix of contrasts:  seemingly over with blooming and showing those dead flower heads while dropping leaves.  Along with this one, shooting-tall limb that has a green top and this pink flower. What does this mean for these shrubs?  Healthy?  Just out of sync?  A weird seasonal anomaly?  Who knows.  

This Spring, I planted a pair of Ruby Slippers Oakleaf Hydrangeas in our backyard in the north bed, behind the Weeping Nootka Cypress and right in a colony with a dwarf Alice Oakleaf Hydrangea that I moved over there a couple of seasons ago.  These two small Oakleaf Hydrangeas were from the Morton Arboretum Plant Sale this year .  As soon as I planted them , the dang rabbits started attacking them, so I kept a little ring of chicken wire around each of them.  That seemed to keep the foliage going and now we're seeing the first blooms.  See below for a photo of the two Ruby Slippers (in the back) showing their first, tall white blooms.  Each of these get four-to-five feet wide, so they have quite a bit of spread yet to come.  But, I'm excited to see these first flowers.  I'm pretty sure that these are far earlier than they'll be in the coming years - and maybe that's due to the flush of growth ahead of the Morton Aboretum Sale has quickened their cycle this year. Ac