From Unpredictable Hue, 2018. Note: After some research I learned that the hydrangea should have stayed blue according to science, but I’m telling you, this is a true story. Only the hydrangea knows. We will try to keep her happy.
Kaffeeklatsch
That hydrangea
flowers used to
come out blue that
unpleasant chemical-looking
kind of blue OK I said
you want to be blue be blue but
this summer that hydrangea
changed to pink some purple
but pretty much
pink. You know they switch personality
alkaline to acid in this case
the soil. That is what does it
the soil where they live. You know.
But if you’re rooted to the spot then
I wonder how you
such a decided blue you decided
to become pink and then
I understand
we throw out coffee grounds
lots of them because my husband
he drinks a lot of coffee and
we toss them right here in this flowerbed
beside the door where you are
and look here now we’ve got
a pink hydrangea
a coffee-drinking hydrangea
look what drinking coffee will
do to you if you are a hydrangea
Powerful stuff. Never touch coffee
myself. Ha! I shut the back door
laughing the pink
indignant hydrangea
sits out there
addicted and waiting
all right have another taste. Let me
get that coffeepot going.
7/19/18
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
This made me laugh. If my husband and I were flowers, we’d be very pink.
Good job recycling coffee grounds. I use coffee grounds as an air purifier.
Now I’m hoping it’s because you are healthy (in the pink) or just cheerful and happy, or that you love coffee. It also does prove you are not acidic, but I knew that already!
Thank you, it all started as convenience but now I think the bush likes the influence of coffee. I cannot imagine how pink it would be without the coffee grounds though, no matter how much we throw out there, it stays pink and drinks it up.
And really, from what I understand, the darn plant should have stayed blue with the acid from the coffee, but it just gets pinker. To me that is the joke. A coffee drinking pink hydrangea, just goes to show you, there are no rules!
No rules at all! 😀
Aww–thanks. We’re both healthy and love coffee!
Plants do have their own minds. I have noticed the hydrangeas in the park change their colors by the week.
Good green thumb. It’s because of you, Claudia. I think you are the one who is bringing the magic.
I recently posted those photos of the deep blue purple ones at the church near me (on the confused blog) because they so struck me and I am still marveling at the color they had. I never saw hydrangeas until I came to PA and I fell in love with them immediately.
Woah! You just gave me an education. I knew about the hydrangea colour being determined by the PH of the soil but I never considered that I could change just the surrounding soil enough to alter the colour. I have a small hydrangea and it is blue. I would much prefer pink-purple. I don’t drink coffee but my husband has, during all of this work from home time, been making a cafetiere of coffee each work day. I shall dump the grounds into that soil and see if the magic happens.
PS One of my sisters has a phobia of hydrangeas. She associates them with death and decay. Our youngest brother has a phobia of sunflowers. Apart from triffids, I am happy to report I have no botanical phobias.
Now I can’t be sure it will work, because theoretically it shouldn’t have for our little pink guy – coffee is acidic and pink is influenced by alkaline, I learned after I wrote this poem. So it’s a mystery why it happened, I think.I can figure no other reason why it changed. You might end up with extra blue. I am so confused now by this issue because what I read tells me coffee should not have worked! But for the poem, it’s all the same – this bush devours coffee grounds. ????
Triffids! You and me both.
So now I am wondering if this poem can eve make sense and I decided yes, the joke is on us, the hydrangea really likes coffee. And how can one fear a pink hydrangea, I do not know. Or sunflowers. Oh dear! Because they are another favorite of mine.
Well my hydrangea is small, sad, and rather pathetic so it will do no harm to give it a bit of a caffeine boost and see what happens.
I liked the whole idea of the plant becoming addicted to consuming other plants, albeit in the form of processed coffee. In my brain, it anthropomorphized the plant into something akin to Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors but demanding another mug of coffee instead of blood.
I love them as well. Right up there with peonies and lilacs.
I do think mine looks better, if nothing else for the fertilizing effect?
That is how I think of this plant now. You notice she is even a she. I worry about her health and admire her fighting spirit (deer eat her tender shoots in the spring, for instance. And when she is bare stalks in winter).
Hilarious :))
Our hydrangea. She never knew what she was in for when she came to live with us!
Well it sounds like she found a perfect spot.
A few years ago I would have been a blue hydrangea, but now there’s an excellent cafe just down the road and I am definitely pink.
My husband loves coffee. If there was a place such as you describe just down the road, there would be a well-worn path to it from our house!