Hortensia, don't you know?

The north wall of cottage #1 is now painted, so I've moved on to the east frontage, just doing the bits I can reach to start with, and moving on to the higher bits today. I need to sweep out the monster cobwebs at the top first. And Xylophene those beam ends. You can see my hydrangeas there in the old stone troughs. The French refer to them as hortensia. I felt compelled to buy some, as literally every home in this area has them. Probably something to do with the staggering (and previously secret) amount of rain!

I particularly chose blue hydrangeas to blend with the washed-out cobalt blue shutters we're going to have, but as you can see from my more recent photo below, they've turned mauve! They'll still blend nicely, and I suspect they have a colour-changing tendency.

Another little concern is that even though hydrangeas LOVE water, do they like to receive THIS much? Look what happens when it rains! I may have to construct some sort of diverter system...