Blue Geraniums

I really like blue flowers;

they are great for cooling your view on a hot August day.

And they offer a kind of tranquility 

that bright red, yellow, or orange flowers just don't attain.

There aren't many blue flowers in comparison

when it comes time for spring or fall planting though.

I seek them out each year, but ultimately I kill blue lobelia every spring, 

and ruin the summer's blue ageratum a few weeks later.

 But when I was reading about geraniums this week,

I discovered there are hybrid blue geraniums that will tolerate partial shade.

The most popular is the Johnson's blue although it seems a little like a fake geranium.

Here's a Johnson's blue geranium:

morguefile.com, image credit: Jusben

Here's an image of blue geraniums in the garden:

By Kor!An (Андрей Корзун) (Own work) 

[CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], 

via Wikimedia Commons

They remind me a little of bachelor's buttons.

I've read that what most Americans call geraniums are not true pelargoniums,

and surprisingly, the only true pelargonium has blue flowers. 

The red geranium is the imposter.

I guess that means the blue geranium is really "true blue" after all.

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