[Garden & Gun] Leo McGee has never been ambivalent about hydrangeas. When he was a boy, his dislike for the beautiful but temperamental blooms veered toward outright hate. "I did yard work for extra money growing up," he says. "Down in Arkansas, the weather was so hot; ten minutes after I’d water the things, they’d dry up again. I even smelled the blooms, and there was no fragrance! So I said to myself: I will never have a hydrangea in my yard." For decades, McGee kept that boyhood promise. But a few years after he and his wife, Gloria, moved from Nashville to Cookeville, Tennessee, to take jobs at Tennessee Tech, he found himself at Johnson’s Nursery & Garden Center, standing in front of a tempting display of three-gallon Nikko Blue hydrangeas. Out of principle, he wandered around the nursery for forty-five minutes before he eventually gave in to the impulse, taking two plants. He carefully transferred them to his backyard—and waited. The cotton-candy blue puffballs didn’t appear again for three years, which should have validated his previous feelings; instead, it sparked his competitive spirit.