Rosehaven Cottage: garlic

Is anyone else mesmerized with the cool tones of purple and blue flowers as much as I am? What is it about those colors on a flower that makes me swoon? They always have, and they always will.

Last year, a 5-inch+ diameter garlic blossom volunteer showed up growing next to the pond. I loved it so much I didn't dig up the garlic bulb to use in the kitchen. Instead it stayed in the ground... and multiplied. This year I have THREE blossoms to enjoy!

I know that I could probably grow more showy alliums, but I don't ever seem to get around to buying and putting in the bulbs in the fall.

Maybe I love blue and blue-ish purple flowers so much because of one of my favorite childhood songs--the 1948 recording of Burl Ives singing Lavender Blue for the little-known Disney film "So Dear To My Heart".

Mr. Ives restful voice singing the words "Lavender blue, dilly dilly... lavender green... If I were king, dilly dilly... I'd need a queen" would tug at my little heart strings and make my insides ache. Even as a 4 year old child, there were some things that would do that to me. Sometimes my eyes would tear up as I listened to the scratchy record play on my little portable phonograph with one speaker. The sentiment truly would pierce me to my core.

All those hundreds of times listening to Burl Ives and imagining what lavender blue and lavender green must look like... I didn't know because I couldn't remember every seeing real lavender before (I wouldn't until I was a 10 or 11). I only knew the colors from my box of Crayola crayons. Thinking of those colors on flowers seemed so magical.

Maybe that's why I love blue flowers so much.

If you're a lover of blue blooms, why do you think you love them so much?

Click here or below to listen to the version of "Lavender Blue" I listened to as a child