prairie point

blue

Blue is my favorite color for the garden. Perhaps that is because I don't see some other colors quite right. I have red-green color blindness like millions of others, mostly males. I can see both red and green as distinctly different colors but when they are together the red seems to disappear. I am never really sure that I see anything that is red the way other people do.

Blue seems to stand out brighter than red or any other color to my eye. In a garden the blue flowers are the first to catch my eye. Maybe that is why I tend to have more than the usual amount in my garden.

This blue is Salvia farinacea. The common name is mealy blue sage, which doesn't sound very appealing. I don't really know where the "mealy" comes from. It blooms somewhat all summer but seems to do best when it turns a little cool. It may have too much shade where it is I suppose for it has gotten leggy and is reaching out over the sidewalk to get more light. Cutting it back a little last month would have made it look better too.

At a presentation recently, the garden writer Bill Welch commented that you could do a whole garden in nothing but salvias. There are some people who have. I have at least seven different kinds myself, more if you count the color varieties.