Exposing A Beauty Queen........

At the beginning of our growing season, the hydrangeas are big and lush with beautiful, full pink and blue flowers and are definitely the "queens" of the garden. As our Texas summers take over with their 100 plus days, it is a struggle to keep them in enough water daily to prevent the wilting or worse, dying. Today I stripped all of my bushes that had blooms still pretty enough to use on dried hydrangea wreaths. I felt like I was wiping all the makeup off of a beauty queen and leaving her exposed for the world to see.......... Although it was sad to do this leaving them bare of any flowers whatsoever, I had to do it because in a couple of days they would be dead and brown anyway......They dry very quickly and are absolutely beautiful, even with smaller flowers as these because you use so many "squashed" together to cover the entire wreath. I ended up with alot more than I thought I would and should be able to complete about four beautiful wreaths for the Main Street Antique Trade Days Sale on October 24th .........

I'm able to find a few larger blooms to cut, but in another day or two they would be unusable.

With the cooler weather at night, the blooms are really starting to wane. The ones that do make it through to the end of the Texas season are much smaller than normal. In two weeks all of the leaves will be brown and ready to hibernate.