Friday, June 12, 2009

Tissue Paper Flowers

As I was poking around outside this morning, making my daily inspection of my flowers to see what's happened overnight, I found THIS!!



It's my Japanese Tree Peony - in all its glory. Yesterday there was only buds - this morning the first bud has opened. The flowers are like tissue paper and it was so huge I had to run and get a ruler to measure it. It's 9 1/2 inches in diameter. That's one HUGE flower, Folks.

For those of you who are gardeners, we're a very definite Zone 3 here, so I don't always get flowers on this peony every year. And this was an extremely harsh winter, along with the fact that everything was under water for two weeks, so the number of buds on this bush has truly surprised me.
Amazingly enough my flowers are gorgeous this year - I think it might have something to do with the cool weather we've been having. Perennials seem to love that. I'll be taking some pictures over the next couple of weeks as things progress and share with you.
I've been spending a lot of time outside - at least when it's not raining - and yesterday finished installing my watering system. So now with the twist of a knob I can water ALL my flower pots at one time, and have all the beds divided into zones that I can turn off and on as needed. I'll eventually be putting a timer on each zone so that when we're gone for a period of time I won't worry about things drying out (as if THAT would ever happen in this neck of the woods!)
Anyway, I must make this short as I've got a ton of stuff to do outside today - like clean up the mess I've made over the last several days as we're having friends over for a fire in the fire pit tonight. Then I've got to spray weeds and cut the grass. There's a full day's job right there so I had best get busy.
Ta ta for now!!
Love Lena

3 comments:

Schnitzel and the Trout said...

Your peony is beautiful and amazingly large! Enjoy! Glad you have some outdoor weather. Still pretty cool though, isn't it?

harrietv said...

It must be the climate. I couldn't even open one of those indoors!

Marge said...

I think peonies are one of my favorite flowers. When I was a kid, we lived at the parsonage in a country parish in Iowa. The place was lush with peonies. Light pink, dark pink, red, white, and a kind of combo pink white one. I loved the fragrance! Makes me lonesome for my childhood!