Thanks, @carolkean!

Yeah, one of the things I've always loved among my favorite musicians, especially Steven Wilson, is how readily they not only admit their influences, but celebrate and honor them in their music.

On Wilson's Myspace account, years ago, he listed close to a hundred strong musical influences, some of which made music literally nothing like anything he's ever done, and closed the paragraph with, "and everything else." My kind of guy.

Mariusz Duda and his band Riverside, who also readily acknowledge the influences they love and grew up with, readily acknowledge Wilson's band Porcupine Tree as a strong influence (which is how I came to know Riverside in the first place, as an avowed Wilson/Porcupine Tree fan), along with other bands such as Marillion, Pink Floyd and Dead Can Dance.

In fact, in the middle of their song "Toward the Blue Horizon," from their sixth album "Love, Fear and the Time Machine," their late guitarist Piotr Grudzinski lifts the entire opening rift from PT's "Blind House," from their last (so far) album, "The Incident."

"Toward the Blue Horizon" is beautiful song on its own merit, but it's always been all the more special to me because of the homage to Porcupine Tree. I love when musicians give one another a musical nod. ;-)

As to the hydrangeas, we have naturally acidic clay-based soil here, so if I put them in the ground the flowers turn more deeply blue over time. Blue is my favorite color, so I'm not messing with it at all.