T-minus one week: Rhapsodie en bleu

I realize I've lapsed back into silence of late, but my reason is a pretty good one. This time next week I'll be about six hours from going into the hospital to have surgery to fix a problem once and for all. (Optimistic to a Fault, that's me!) I won't be in hospital for long, which is a good thing because separating me from my iPhone or Nano full of music will make me even crankier than I usually am. However, when I get home I'll be way limited in what I can do. No lifting, etc. Even my laptop I think is slightly over the five pound limit. Definitely won't be going anywhere for at least a week.

So I have to basically finish up some work for the next three or four weeks plus get ready for Christmas before next Sunday night. Which has me singin' the blues. And I don't mean Blue Christmas, either. But you know what? Whatever doesn't get done, is not that important. We're all adults in my family and we'll be together and if my dearly beloved gets press-ganged into doing all the wrapping of stuff other than what he's getting, well, he's a good and patient man and will handle that with his usual aplomb. Especially since we know Simon, Mungus, and the rest of the crew will be glad to help him with such preparations. I'll lay back in bed or on the couch, read blogs and books, and practice getting healed up quickly. So it will all work out.

I'm working on a project that I hope to be able to tell you more about early in the New Year, but I'm just superstitious enough that I won't say more than that. However, I've been looking through some of the gazillion files on my computer and found a folder full of blue-flowered plants, about which I've waxed rhapsodic in the past. They're so beautiful, I thought I'd share them, especially as we sail into the Christmas season where so much is decorated in green, red and white. All of which I love, but it's well known that my favourite flowers in the garden tend to all be blue. 
When we are down in the dumps, we say we have the blues. I've always found that curious because I find blue to be a most soothing and yet uplifting colour. Of course, many of the flowers we call blue are actually lavender, mauve, purple, violet, or other colour related to but not exactly true blue. 


It would be fun to do an all blue planting in my garden, as we actually have quite a number of blue flowered perennials, annuals and shrubs. They don't, however, all bloom at the same time and the rebel gardener in me would have to plop something brilliant orange or fuchsia into the middle to just set it all off. But it would be fun, because I never met a blue flowered plant I didn't love.

I stand corrected. I don't love this, or even like it. To be honest, my first reaction when I saw these painted poinsettias a few years ago was revulsion. Now I just roll my eyes at them the way I do at the black, pink or tangerine coloured fake Christmas trees that some like. Chacun a son gout, of course, but you won't see a blue poinsettia in my house this Christmas.

Nor in my hospital room. Just sayin'.