Apparently, the color of hydrangeas is affected by the acidity of the soil. I found this out this weekend. Right now, all the hydrangeas in Sendai are blooming, and they look quite startling. I’m used to the plain white snowball bushes, or the very light blue ones. In Japan, they show up in deep Carolina blue, brilliant fuchsia, and purple, sometimes all on the same bush. On my way home from Mukaiyama, there is a daycare center playground at the bottom of a steep hillside. The hillside is covered with hydrangea bushes, and once they started blooming, the hill looked dotted with bright balls of blue and pink amidst all the usual tangled green. It makes me smile every day I walk past. On the way to Minami, there is a house with windows facing the sidewalk beside the river. The windows are covered with shoji screens patterned with birds made of wood, and when if the person inside were to open the screens, they would be looking at the trunk of a large cherry tree and the blue-and-purple blooms of the big hydrangea growing at the tree’s base. I wish I lived in that room.