Sweet Georgia Blue

We've had an unusually long and cold winter this year. This past weekend was very nice, but the weekend before we had snow. And in the days between those two events, it was still chilly and windy -- with pretty cold nights. So I was surprised to go out there one of those days and be greeted by this sweet little harbinger of spring. Amidst the dead leaves that have lay there all winter, and despite the harsh weather conditions, she stuck her lovely little face up toward the sun and, unlike the grousey ground hog, declared that spring is just around the corner!

There is an area in the front of the house where we put a fountain a few years ago and I consider this spot to be my "presidential garden"...because it is a garden of hope and change -- and ultimate disappointment. Every spring when the weather warms up, I get energized and enthusiastic about gardening. This is a nice little area to work in. So I go up the road a ways to my favorite nursery and start buying plants to put in. I get Jerry to dig lots of little holes (hey...that's hard work!) and I start putting things in. The fact that most of these are perennials and yet I'm buying new ones every year will tell you what kind of green thumb I have. So with great expectations for the riot of color that I will see all summer long, I plant. I read up on these plants and believe all the wonderful things that they are said to do. But then, alas, summer comes. And with it comes heat. I don't "do" sweating, so I go in the air conditioning and read a book. Then come the bugs...feasting on the tiny roots of my new friends. Then, more times than I care to remember, comes the drought -- and the "Sweet Georgia Brown" clay turns to adobe bricks. Mi Casa doesn't look so good by now.

So last spring, in a fit of such enthusiasm, I purchased three of these cute little plants called Veronica peduncularis 'Georgia Blue'. They were only $1 each and I took them home and apologized to them for what their future would hold. I nestled them together under a hosta and next to a cute rock that has actually survived in the "garden" for several years now. But they shared my vision and soon spread out and made themselves at home. A short while later I had to take the two that were closest to the hosta and move them on the other side and space them out further. They are spring bloomers, so the flowers didn't last long. But these little plants delighted me all summer. Because of the low height they neatly mounded even as they spread and the foliage was a pleasant change from brown dirt.

In the last few days, with the warmer weather and sun peeking out, several others have joined the first flower in opening up and I'm seeing lots and lots of buds! So I'm going to hang my hopes on the catalog description (this is THEIR photo) and expect this little gem to please me for many months to come. I'm sure she'll be one reason I go to the nursery and spend lots and lots of green on my "presidential garden" again this year. Wish me luck!