In search of Nikko Blue

On a mad dash to the garden store, I picked up a copy of a new gardening magazine, called "Dream Gardens". Did I say "picked up"? What I should say is, "I snatched". Like a mad shoplifter on a tanget, I saw the cover and my heart said, "ooooooh, I want THAT!"

My friend Terry Hershey (www.terryhershey.com) says in "Soul Gardening" that these kind of magazines are like rose porn to those of us passionate about gardening. And its true. After getting dinner, making calls, doing the day to day, I will sit down with my favorite things: Tall glass of iced tea, "Law and Order" reruns and gardening books.

Not all passions make sense, you know.

The gardens in the book were heartrenderingly beautiful and I began to fantasize about new garden structures, new depths of ponds, new colors splayed out to devour. I was in over my head, past the point of return, dangerously close to the intoxicating effects of what all gardeners know: there is some serious money about to be spent.

I remember drifting off to sleep thinking about the small fence I'll build this spring to enclose the patio. I thought about the 50 or so boxwood shrubs that need to be put around my borders. I considered the stella o dora's that look so beautiful up against the ballerina rose. I began to dream of a garden paradise and I the great gardener, bringing all things beautiful to life around me.

So it makes perfect sense that I would awaken this morning with one thing on my mind: Nikko Blue Hydrangeas. Big balls of blue tuft that grace emerald green leaves. Cool, refreshing, the mere appearance of them says, "summer time".

Still in my stupor, I tour the garden as I do each morning. Stumbling over the rake I left out yesterday. Picking up the damp seat of a patio chair caught in last nights rain, I take stock of my little project.

Another trouble with fantasies? They make your current lover look a bit lacking. I see the pond that is still not finished. The garden beds that aren't yet full, still reeling from my hackneyed cleaning up job of the previous days. I see the still unpainted parts of the pergola, not to mention the still gaping hole where a beautiful pond will someday exist.

This is where the reality-TV show crew is suppose to come in and make my dreams come true. But no truck or crew will be arriving. It's just me, my now lukewarm coffee, my faithful dog looking into a sad, dreary plot of land.

The hard part of dreams is that they take a lot of work. Much easier to admire others years of work than to pick up my own shovel and start in on it. Lots easier to throw money desperately away on books whose gardens may have taken 25 years to create. The bigger the dream, the bigger the fall from reality.

Where'd I put that book?