Blue, Blue, My Blue Petunias are....Purple

On May 31 I blogged about the Sky Blue petunias I purchased mail order from Burpees.  This would be a most unusual flower color for a petunia.  I was looking forward to receiving the plants.  I had a planter and a hanging basket ready for them.

I promised I would post a picture when they bloomed.

Here they are.

Wrong picture?  No.  They aren't sky blue.

They are purple.  Or lavender-ish.  But not blue.

Sometimes, there is disappointment in gardening.  I just didn't have good luck with this order at all, as I blogged about earlier.  I truly don't know how much I can blame on Burpees (and I will, calmly, contact their customer service people with the other issues I experienced) but I was really disappointed by the purp....I mean sky blue petunias.

I suspected they were going to be maybe blue with a purplish tint.  I love unusual flowers, and I could have lived with that.  But the catalog description says, and I quote:

Here, before your eyes, is the first and only spreading petunia with true azure blooms. This old-fashioned charmer in a stunning new color rolls out a low-growing carpet of sky-blue 3" flowers all summer—a sea of tranquility for a sunny spot.

Azure.  Hmmm.  I looked azure up online, and Wikipedia told me, and again I quote:

 The word Azure is a near synonym for the color blue. Commonly it refers to a bright blue, resembling the sky on a bright, clear day.

I haven't seen too many skies the color of these flowers.  I have seen purple petunias approximating this shade locally, and would have gladly given my business to a local nursery if that is what I had wanted.  But sky blue-not that's not something you find in petunias every day.  I was expecting something closer to a morning glory type blue.

Please don't get me wrong.  This isn't tragic, there are lots more important things going on in my life, and my growing season isn't wrecked.  Life will go on and I'm sure these flowers will be pretty.  I'm sure they will give me a lot of pleasure.

But I do feel misled.  Misled by a company that I have faithfully purchased gardening items from for most of the last 33 years.  I pay extra for that quality, and money becomes more and more precious every year.

Maybe this is a sign that I need to go back to basics.

At that I will have to give business to a local nursery because it appears that 9 of the 12 double flowered impatiens I received in the same order have gone to the great flower patch in the sky.

The azure sky.

JUNE 4 UPDATE:  Only two of the 12 impatiens left alive.  And now it's starting to rain again....