Beauty the brave, the exemplary, blazing open

There it is again: peony time. Here, an excerpt from Mary Oliver's meditation on mortality, Peonies . . .

Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

Peonies, pre-perfection

Each spring, the peonies that I brought up from my mother's garden in Maryland start off with burgundy-flushed foliage.



The tender stems and leaves are the most beautiful deep shade that, with maturity, passes to green.



Even this early, flowers are forming and ants are sipping nectar from the buds. The peony hoops went in yesterday--while the plants were young, flexible, and promising of perfection.

Just because . . .

. . . peonies are in bloom.

Exponential explosion: 3 Days of Rain + (90 Degrees + Sunshine) = Peoniesn

The math is simple. Hot weather following wet days results in an overnight explosion of peony blooms.



After interminable lingering, with the slow march of time marked by the meandering of ants over the buds, all the flowers fully opened. Instantly. It happened so quickly that there was no time even to clip a few flowers for a bouquet. This year, the show is outdoors.

Because peonies seem to be such old-fashioned flowers--and rightly so, given the longevity of single plants--I follow some old-fashioned guidance for their care.

The 1947 edition of Roy E. Biles' "The Complete Book of Garden Magic" strikes just the right tone, even if we suburbanites can no longer burn our wilted peony foliage.



This is the rare book that combines useful information, strong narrative voice, and charming illustrations. It gets the math.

Yesterday's world

Yesterday, this corner of the garden was easing into fall.



Today, it is a hole. All part of a project to seal the foundation wall.



In between this horticultural being and nothingness, plants were moved to their new holding beds. Here are Siberian and bearded iris divisions awaiting re-planting.



No attempt was made at artful arrangement in their new beds. I just tried to keep various types of plants together so I will be able to assess how they look when it comes time to return them to their former homes. Next to a border of yews, I laid out a strip of Siberian irises "King of Kings" and heirloom peonies (dark pink to left, pale pink to right). These are all closer neighhbors than they should be but, heck, it's only temporary. I will separate the clumps that need to be to be separated when they return to their homes.



Yellow bearded irises joined others of different varieties by the rosebush and, along with a sedum and some daisies, squeezed into the new side bed.



I put aside several buckets' worth of daisies, sedum, and phlox to offer to fellow gardeners. And I noticed that someone had been stashing discarded old divisions behind the compost pile. Those thrifty Yankees!

The only upside to this project is that I will be able to convert the holding beds into growing space when their temporary inhabitants have been returned to their beds. What will I plant? More dahlias, for sure, and I'll show the delicious reasons why in a future post. Oh, I guess that it's healthy to renovate one's garden occasionally, too.

Life goes on.

Pinks of perfection

There are a lot of pink flowers in my garden. A real lot, especially since I don't consider myself a pink person. I put in one pink blooming plant, added another, then realized that a third would look great next to the others . . . and so on, down the slippery slope.

This deep pink peony is a division from a colleague's homestead in Vermont. (Thanks, SF!) The petals are a rich raspberry color with edges tinged almost silver. It's been slowly increasing each year--but won't we all take our time when we're 70 years old?



Perennial dianthus "Bewitched" rings the feet of another pink peony. By cutting back after the first bloom, I can usually extract a smaller second season. As well as its cheerful flowers, it boasts delicate blue-green foliage.



Self-sowing larkspur has moved closer to the similarly hue "New Dawn" roses.





Above the retaining wall in the front, little fuchsia Allium ostrowskianum are growing in a bed of white-flowering vinca.



Worth replanting bulbs every year!

Monnie's peonies

The peonies that I transplanted from my mother's garden two years ago have bloomed for the first time.



When I saw these full, frilly blossoms, I thought of their connection with my grandmother, Monnie.



Although she looks very solemn in this formal portrait, taken in St. Louis around 1909, I know from her diaries that this lively woman loved playing cards, riding horses, attending theatricals, and socializing with her seven siblings, numerous cousins, and beaux.

Monnie was relatively young when she died from a protracted degenerative illness. According to my mother, my grandfather never spoke about her--"because he loved her too much"--but he would take peonies from my mother's garden to lay on Monnie's grave on their wedding anniversary. I suspect that the story is rather more complicated than that of transcendent love, but who knows?

So now, linking three generations, sixty years, and four hundred miles, I have the same peonies growing in my garden.

The peony and the pea

I planted a row of "Old Spice" sweet peas back on April 1. By May 3, a slightly wobbly line of young plants had appeared.



These sprouts are wedged in tight quarters between a window well, house wall, dianthus, and peony. And there's the squeeze . . . as the peony grows taller, it blocks out light to the peas behind it. By today, the peas were only about four inches high. They have a long stretch in order to tendril up that trellis.



So, as always, I slipped a few nursery plants in at both ends of the line. A bucket of compost was troweled in before three specimens of "Royal Mix" were added. Both varieties should yield a jumble of white, pink, red, and violet blooms, or some portion thereof.



Now that looks better--almost like these plants like it back there!

Double take

I have strong recollections of my mother's garden. I remember in particular one bed that edged the driveway was planted every summer with a line of red salvia. (Maybe those horticultural horrors contributed to my decision to leave home.) So when I chanced upon this photograph, it brought back memories of the technicolor 1970's. Those ghastly salvia look like the flames of hell. But what would an Antarctic explorer, Washington lawyer, former debutante, and unidentified fellow traveler be doing in a sulfurous place like that? (Drinking bourbon and branch, I suspect.)



So imagine my surprise when I saw another photograph of the same flower bed taken earlier in the same year and from a different angle.



I don't remember any irises in that garden--but there they are--and blooming a cool, subdued shade of lilac. I do recall a dark red peony--and, there is it, too--but when I asked my mother many years later if I could have a division from that plant, she didn't remember it in her garden. Memories can create their own gardens, I guess.

Strategies for January

How to pull through the gloomy days of winter:

1. Thank the catalog companies for saving one's sanity with those over-the-top plant porn photos. Despite my resulting fantasies (to the extent allowed to a middle-aged member of "God's frozen people"), I've ordered only tobacco "Perfect Mix" (Nicotiana x sanderae) from Select Seeds and sweet pea "Old Spice" (Lathyrus odoratus) and evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) from Johnny's Selected Seeds. I am sticking to seeds that can be direct sown in the garden.

Okay, I did slip for a fuchsia "Gartenmeister Bonstedt," too. Caught me.

2. Turn the compost pile. At least, that thing is steaming!

3. Mulch the rose and peonies with boughs lopped off the Christmas tree on its way out the door. Finally, the ground has frozen, so it's time to insulate those roots under a deep spruce blanket.

4. Dream of summer . . .

Peony in a suitcase

Five or six years ago, when my mother asked me what she could bring during her annual trip up north from Maryland, I replied that I would really like to have a division from one of the peonies lining her driveway. She had tended a row of seven or eight peonies during her forty-five years in that Chevy Chase house, and I loved watching as every spring the maroon peony stalks emerged, their deep red foliage turned green, and shell pink blossoms erupted from their tight round buds.



After not a small amount of badgering, my mother reluctantly agreed to bring up a division. She packed it carefully in a hard-sided suitcase and checked it as luggage on her flight north. The day after her arrival, she planted the peony in my garden. Her gardening skill was unerring: the peony was blooming the next year and still holds pride of place.

Every spring, I dust with a copper fungicide when the stalks are about three inches high, claw in a handful of bonemeal and 1/4 cup of 10-10-10 around the roots, and stake with a metal ring support. After the foliage dies in the fall, I trim the stems back to about 1 inch and fertilize with more bonemeal.

Last spring, before my mother sold her house, I asked my older brother to take some more peonies. He transplanted several clumps into his Laurel yard. In late July, I stopped there to collect a few during the long drive back north after my mother's memorial service and burial in Virginia. After being twice moved in six months, they looked pretty miserable by the end of the summer. However, this spring, the familiar maroon stalks emerged. A blessing and a gift.