Apologies to Echinops

Have you ever apologized to a plant?  I haven't.  But maybe I should.

Look at this astilbe, for example:

OK, well, you probably can't see it very well, because I took this photo when the sun was too bright.  It's the brownish beige vertical thing in the middle.  It's there, and it's dead, illustrating one of the sayings of one of my favorite gardening teachers, the late great Fred McGourty of Hillside Gardens in Norfolk:  "A dry astilbe is a dead astilbe." 

Now here's another plant to which I would owe an apology if I ever apologized to plants:  Globe thistle (echinops).

A couple of weeks ago I complained bitterly in this blog about my globe-thistle, a beautiful plant that has failed to share its beauty with me.  http://stitching-it-all-together.blogspot.com/2015/07/globe-thistle-global-disappointment.html.

I complained that although its leaves were robust, its flowers never achieved the rich blue so beloved in globe thistles.  Mine were a washed-out white.

Now  the globe thistle is surprising me.  Its blah white flowers are actually opening up blue.

Okay, so maybe another bad photo, but I hope you can see that part of the top of this flower is opening up blue.

This one too.  Can you see the top opening up blue?

Maybe the flowers that so disappointed me before were unripe, not opened yet.  If these globe thistles are actually going to bloom blue, they'll win my heart.

Apologies to echinops?