Priscilla's Workshop

 Peonies are among my favorite flowers so moving back east where they are more common made getting some new ones imperative as well. We had brought a few from Utah as our small yard there did not have grass but we did have all sorts of flowers. Peonies pretty much need a change of seasons or at least that's my understanding, and we have singles, and doubles, and colors ranging from white to burgundy and moving through all the pink or pinkish colors on the way there. At least those were the colors up until this year. 

Five years ago, right after some yahoo poisoned my coonhound making us choose to leave the house we had just moved into, I saw that there were some new varieties that included yellow peonies. I had a sort of yellow tree peony in Utah but it wasn't even that yellow. These new plants that were a combination of herbaceous and tree peonies were far more interesting to me so I ordered three plants and put them in the ground.

There was no luck for four years. The first year here I thought it might be because I had planted them too late for spring bloom so I left them. After another year of no blooms (the third year by now), I decided to try moving them again so that fall I lifted them higher. Aargh! Still no blooms so I waited until fall again and lifted all of them one inch higher, discovering in the process that one had "calved" so now I had four plants to deal with. Well that did the trick, or at least 3/4 of the trick. Three of the four plants are not only blooming but in such abundance and so magnificently that for the past ten days my husband and I have been standing in awe just looking at them.

As I wrote, they are not the only peony plants we have and where they are planted now they alternate with some enormous double peonies in burgundy. I had my husband take photos of those and of the current amaryllis blooming in a front bed. That's right, folks, against all odds, I have yet another amaryllis (mostly known as a Christmas gift flower that blooms once inside and then gets tossed), blooming and this time with five flowers on one stalk and another three flowered stalk following behind. The burgundy peonies are 9 inches across and the yellow ones are slightly smaller at about 7 inches. Each plant except one has at least ten blooms and that one will have to be lifted higher again in September. At my advanced age I was never entirely sure I would live long enough to see these flowers which I hope isn't some sort of omen for what happens next.

 

    

In the functional part of the garden, we now have some small green tomatoes, we have tons of asparagus and lots of mesclun, some collard greens and soon some green beans. The newest element in our food garden will be strawberries. We had a pretty steep hill section next to a sidewalk which made the seriously angled slope mowing hard. Even though my husband is even older than I am, he insists on doing his own mowing still but that was too much for him so he skimmed off the grass, added compost and good soil, and planted 75 strawberries. He got 25 June bearing and 50 ever bearing and right now they are all living up to those descriptions. In front of those, I planted about 100 potato starts of three different varieties. Most people seem to be unaware that home grown potatoes are so different from store potatoes that they might as well be a different food altogether. It's always too much for the two of us but overplanting is the only way I know to be sure that I have enough for any meal. Our neighbors do like the distribution of excess though some are getting a wee too proprietary about it for me, now asking when the tomatoes (or whatever) will be ready. I am happy to share, but if they act as though they already own the fruits of my labor they may be surprised.

If there are more typos than usual here, I apologize. I am getting used to a new laptop whose keyboard is bigger and more complicated.