Hydrangea season is long and generous, unlike the fly-by-night progression of lilacs, peonies and roses that take their sweet time getting here, and vamoose just when we’ve fallen completely in love.

To be fair, in this part of the world, hydrangea and viburnum both decorate the summer in fat snowballs of one zillion tiny flowers, and thick green leaves – and you have to know something to tell the two apart while they are blooming. (Which, by the way, I do not. Know anything. But we are clear on that.)

Eventually, the viburnums’ snowballs melt away, revealing their true identity in berries ranging from glossy currant-red to deep matte purple. Hydrangeas’ flowers turn instead to parchment right where they bloomed, aging to green or rose or buff through the last days of autumn. Then snow piles up on the shivering dried flower heads, clinging in cascades and crevices that outline their dense petals. This friendly habit of being beautiful for 9 or 10 months of the year would be reason enough for our grandmother’s to love hydrangea (and they did). But also, some hydrangeas grow flower heads as big as small melons – and who doesn’t love a giant flower?

I have no hydrangea of my own, but my friend from work made sure I got some from the long, dense planting that follows the side of his house, leading back to the raspberry patch. His grandmother taught him to grow raspberries and hydrangeas – and she did a good job. He brought in glorious 2-foot stems, grand enough for a show-stopping centerpiece in the swankest hotel lobby. I noticed the slightest scent – barely sweet, like old Ponds cold cream – as I stood them in a wastebasket of water for a fresh drink, out of the way by the coat rack. “It smells just like a flower shop over there,” he said. And it did.

I thought his grandmother might like something a little closer to home than that grand hotel lobby. An old teapot on the table, full of creamy white snowballs, and lace-petalled stars, gathered freely from the rough edge of the field, out past the yard, where nature follows her own devices.