mrr design

Peonies have been everywhere in the blogosphere lately,

so I decided to join the party.

And they are bloosoming everywhere in my neck of the woods these days.

An image from today: the Offinger's farm up the road.

I love having a party in June when I can buy bushels of peonies from the Offingers.

The effect is beautiful and the scent, delicious.

Just last week the Writer's Almanac posted this poem. Lovely

PEONIES

by Jeanne Lohmann

Grandma called them pineys, and I didn't know why.

They smelled so good, the full lush petals

crowded thick, the whole flower heavy on its stem,

the leaves dark and rich and green as shade in Chatauqua Woods

where each spring I hunted for violets. What could there be

to pine for on this earth? Now I think maybe it was Missouri

she missed, and maybe that was what somebody she knew

called peonies there, before she traveled to Ohio,

a sixteen-year-old bride whose children came on as fast

as field crops and housework. Her flowers saved her,

the way they came up year after year and with only a bit of care

lived tender and pretty, each kind surprising,

keeping its own sweet secret: lily-of-the-valley, iris,

the feathery-leaved cosmos, lilacs in their white and purple curls,

flamboyant sweet peas and zinnias, the bright four o'clocks

and delphinium, blue as her eyes, and the soft peony flowers

edged deep pink. In her next life I want my grandmother

to walk slowly through the gardens in England and Kyoto.

I want to be there when she recognizes the flowers

and smiles, when she kneels and takes the pineys in her hands.