Peony Explosion

The first time I saw a picture of a peony, I feel in love with this gorgeous flower and it's been a mad romance since that day. And this began with a mere picture of the flower. Never mind the fact that it was the middle of the summer. I knew not much about gardening, except that I had just caught the gardening bug. I purchased the peony roots and proceeded to plant them in the dead of the summer. Of course since peonies are to be planted in the fall, nothing came of those efforts, except a loss of money and a great lesson learned. RIF, reading is fundamental. Had I read the package, I would have known this was not the right time for planting peonies.

Someone famous once said, "I never saw a flower that I didn't like". Well, I have some friends who, let's just say, they're flower snobs. Most of their garden is filled with small, very rare, and delicate types. They don't like peonies and consider them too big and showy. To each his own, I absolutely love them; to me they're bodacious and beautiful. When they're totally open, their texture reminds me of paper, kind of on the order of poppy flowers. And their transformation from that weird looking bud, to the show stopping, pink blossom, never ceases to amaze me.

Fast forward to today and I have been taking pics every year of my peonies, as if they were school pictures of my kids or something. This year I tried my best to get each stage of their development. But that's a tricky task. This past Monday one of the peonies was barely open, just sort of peaking out. You could barely see it. Two hours later when I came outside to take a photo of it, it had totally opened up (it was 89 degrees). I couldn't believe it! Imagine if I had had a video taping the entire opening, like a PBS nature show or something. It would have been phenomenal. But such is life. I missed that show.

I've been through this almost every year with my peonies. They will be locked up, closed tight, taking their sweet time to open and bloom. And then it's like, BOOM, there's a heat wave and they literally explode open. I would prefer a slow and steady opening, so as to drag out this fabulous show of nature. Because once they're all the way open, the next stage is the petals dropping one by one, to the ground. It's a beautiful experience regardless of the timing of the heat wave. And I am so blessed to have this enchanting experience year after year. Sweet peonies, my love, I'll await your return again and again.

2009 peony show.

Budding Into Existence

My, some times it’s so cold in March you're tempted ask the weather, “Hey don’t you get it, spring is here”? But despite the cold, I can still feel spring in the air. I see it all around me as the colors appear in my own front yard. I have some evergreen Vinca ground cover and it blooms tiny, little, five petal, purple flowers that seem to indicate, it won’t be too long now. There’s that Harbinger of spring, my puny, little, Forsythia with bright, yellow blooms on it. And of course I have my favorite of all time, a pink herbaceous Peony. Right now the only sign of the impending peony is a strange, dusty, burgandy bud. Yes, that’s the the weird looking thing in the picture above. My peonies are show-stoppers! They’re pink, one my favorite colors. And every year I wait for them to strut their stuff. They stop even the busiest person in their tracks to admire both their size and their beauty.

There's a flowering tree called a redbud a.k.a. Cercis canadensis in my yard. Unfortunately, that’s getting cut down this year. It’s just too big for the space. When I originally placed my order, I ordered a miniature, called Cercis Covey a rare, weeping, redbud which grows no higher than 5 feet. But I didn't check my invoice thoroughly enough. It said redbud, so I assumed they had sent me what I had ordered. They sent me the right species but the wrong genus. So each year it just gets wider and taller. I have one neighbor in particular who complains about this. It can grow up to 20 feet high and 40 feet wide! Way too big. The redbud only blooms for about three weeks, but man is it a beauty! The moment you turn onto my block you see pink in the sky and you wonder, “What is that pink vision in the sky”? But right now it has these tiny hard buds that look like pointed, purplish-red, peas.

There’s also some Helleborus out there. What a trip those flowers are! First they take three years to bloom and then the only thing you see is the tops of their heads. They droop. So you have to bend down and lift their faces, as if they were drunk or something to see their beauty. I bought them because they were on the cover of the catalog and they looked so exotic. They’re also shade lovers so when everything is in its glory, full and blooming, they’re literally hidden. But hey, that’s how it is sometimes in life; you have to go in search of beauty. The blessing is, it’s always there for those who seek it.

Last but certainly not least in my tiny yard is a Spiraea Japonica Shibori. That makes three Asian native plants, in my tiny front garden. Did you just notice that it went form being a yard to a garden? Anyway, this shrub has puffy, powdery looking flowers that bloom all summer if they have enough sun and light. But because of the size of redbud, my sunny garden has been turned into a shade garden and the Japonica suffers. Not good! What’s good for shade loving plants does not apply to what sun-loving plants prefer. Even my window boxes had been suffering until I realized that because of the tree shading the windowsills, I had to switch over to shade plants for the window boxes. Back when the tree was small and you could still see my window boxes, I did win awards two years in a row from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. That was really special.

It’s all good. I love the buds; they give me hope that despite climate change and weather debacles, some things remain the same. Come Spring, coy and innocuous little buds bloom into beautiful flowers. Ahhh spring!