Back to School (black) & Blues

We have a custom in our house.  Every first day of school, the kids get their picture taken in front of the Blue Door.  Actually, most of the doors in our house are blue; “Blue Door Day” is code for Very Important Event.  School, athletic events, proms, finals, travel adventures - you know the sort.  There is generally much rolling of the eyes and impatient sighs…”mommmmm, I gotta go!”  But the real magic is when you line all the Blue Door shots up together.  Together they tell a story of the growth of a family.

This year we’re finding the Blue Door a little slippery.  My son is due at school (across town) at 7:10 AM!!!  To say that he is not a “morning person” is to call rain wet.  I’ve missed the opportunity to snap my BD shot these past two days as he’s lucky to even be dressed, equipped and mobile…feeding is optional. 

Today is my daughter’s first day student teaching.  Talk about the circle completing itself, from first day of Kindergarten to teaching!  We got the shot this morning.  (She was generous enough to have roommates take her BD pictures, minus the blue door, during the years she was off at college – see, she gets it!)  We’ll keep trying for the moving target that is Max flying out the (blue) door every morning around 6:45am!!!

I’m not what you would call a “helicopter mom”, ever hovering and orchestrating my kids’ daily lives – not even close.  In fact, I’m more apt to declare “stick a fork in her/him – she’s/he’s DONE!”  Well, Max is almost done, we do still have to get him out the door every morning for the next 9 months!!! 

It’s not necessarily an easy transition to watch your kids go out into an oh-so-flawed world.  It can cause a mother to cramp up with control (or lack thereof).  So, what do I do?  I go out into the garden, of course, where I can capture compositions of color and contrast and still a moment, caught in pixels, where everything works. 

In keeping with the Blue Door Day here are my snaps of garden blues:

A shade composition of Dichroa fibrifuga, or Blue Evergreen Hydrangea, and the finely cut, nearly turquoise blue foliage of Dicentra ‘Langtrees’, or Fringed Bleeding Heart.  The real WOW is still a month or so off when the blossoms of the Dichroa give way to 1/2″ metallic blue/purple berries that hold on the plant well into the winter.  A few dangling racemes of heart-shaped white flowers on the bleeding heart are still in bloom as they have been since early spring – now that’s a satisfying plant!  Note: Dicentra ‘Langtrees’ is apt to scuttle through a bed mingling and generally insinuating itself into the crown of everything nearby, as you see here.  Finally, the white leaf margins of Hosta ‘Regal Spendor’ brighten the dark green of the groundcover.

I’m all about the edibles…ornamental edibles are even better!  ‘Sunshine Blue’ Blueberry is a winner on so many accounts.  A dwarf plant, to about 3-4′, clothed in beautiful chalky blue evergreen foliage that takes on rich autumnal hints with cool weather.  Fat berries set in numbers – the plants are self-fertile – and taste like the sweet, tangy wild native blueberries of our Cascade mountains.  No bland, mealy berry on this star!  The plants have only been in the garden since May but already are earning their keep in so many delicious ways.  ‘Sunshine Blue’ was originally developed as a commercial crop but because the berries set underneath the canopy of leaves they were problematic to harvest and were not considered a success.  Factory farm loss is the homeowners win!!!  The berries are hidden from the birds and crop over a long period of time.  I can’t say enough wonderful things about this beautiful landscape plant.

Climbing Blueberry, or Billardiera longiflora, is not in fact a real blueberry but one can clearly see how it got the moniker! An evergreen vine to about 6′ that twines itself neatly up the railing of our back stairs.  Narrow dark green foliages remains clean throughout the year and shaggy, copious, somewhat nondescript limey-green flowers appear in May only to give way to these beauties in late summer.  Oh MY!  This is another one of those plants that, for all it’s relatively small dimensions, totally steals the show when it is in fruit!!!  Brilliant plantsmanship, clever compositions, vintage trailer be damned…  this little guy wins ‘em over every time.

Okay, technically more black than blue, but like I always say – a gal’s gotta eat!  The himalayan blackberries are ripe in the weedlots and greenbelts throughout the city.  Their perfumed, winey-tart flavor is our ONLY reward for fighting their wicked brambles and thorns all the rest of the months of the year!  A pernicious weed if there ever was one, thickets are quick to engulf empty lots, fences, and small buildings.  This is the Northwest’s Kudzu…only we can make a delightful jam from it’s fruit.  Truth be told, I would probably miss these thugs if we ever did erradicated them…which there is absolutly no chance of ever happening. 

The coming week promises to be sunny and warm.  Isn’t that always the way on the week the kids have to go back to school?!?  I think I’ll wander over to the greenbelt, pick some more berries and make some tarts, a nice treat to get us all over this seasonal hump.