This beautiful Hydranga grows in front of the office of a hotel on Rte. 3, about two feet from the busy highway on one side and the same distance from the roundabout on the other. All winter the plow trucks brush it by and dump sand and salt all over the little plot of grass it sits on. It never seems to be watered or cared for in the summer; they just mow the lawn around it and let it be. No one prunes it or takes off the dead flower heads in the fall. Evidently hydrangaes love neglect.
I’ve admired this shrub for years and tried to draw it once or twice but I’ve failed miserably to bring across the sheer abundance of the blossoms, the fade from dark to bright on the individual flower heads as well as en masse and the strength of the branches underneath that carpet of foliage. It is now firmly in the category of “things I’m never going to paint”.
