journeying with peonies

Growing up at my parents’ house in Oak Brook, my absolute favorite part of each spring was the short burst of peony blossoms from the three bushes we had (they came with the house; my parents weren’t into gardening). Each of these bushes had a different color — one pink like this picture, one white, and one white but dipped in pink. 😍

The last year we lived there, my parents hired these roofers to redo the roof as we prepared to sell the house. To my horror, they worked exactly during that two-week pocket of time where the peonies at the front of the house were in bloom, and they threw all these shingles off the house and crushed them.

Anthony and I moved in together at our apartment for a handful of years, and we lived on the second floor with a tiny wooden landing without access to any land.

Peonies are perennial bushes and grow from bulbs; they really need to be planted into the ground. We nonetheless covered that ~5’x6’ landing with pots and even trees(!), and my custom built herb garden I’d made during the Oak Brook days. It was the tiniest little jungle you’d ever see, floating above an asphalt island. 😍

I was disappointed to not be able to plant peonies at the apartment. But I bought a bag of bulbs in preparation for when we’d one day have a house!

As soon as we moved into this house in 2018, we planted some. A year passed with barely anything we could see.

Then last year, Anthony found someone someone on Craigslist who’d split a TON of peony bulbs selling them for barely anything.

He delighted me with this provision I wasn’t expecting. We now had so many peony plants we gave a bunch away and still had too many. 😂

I also found a yellow hybrid breed last year that I planted front & center.

After all this anticipation you might think we now have a small peony farm!

But kind of like me . . . these plants play the LONG GAME.

We only had our first blooms last year, which fizzled out the moment they opened because the sun blazed them that time of year. (Note: these are full-sun flowers.)

The one hybrid bush caught some sort of fungus or disease, and I wasn’t sure it would survive.

The split bulbs from the Craigslist guy were (and still are) stunted.

I told Anthony today I’d like to plant one more bush (with white blossoms), and his response was that we’d better do it now since it takes years to truly establish.

This year’s peony season has brought more promise, likely due to this hot/cold-flash spring we’ve been having. The hybrid bush that was sick last year is beginning to bounce back — it’s still quite small and likely won’t bloom this year at all.

The peonies are only one expression of nature we have gotten into relationship with through these years. Last year, I learned to tend to roses and sunflowers. Anthony’s expertise is much more in the food gardening arena (just ask him about his relationship to bok choy!), although I do still enjoy my herbs.

I find that the medicine of tending to a garden, no matter what’s in it, is to surrender to divine timing, educate yourself on the nature of what it is you’re growing, to trust in the process, and never ever get arrogant about what you think you know.

The hardest part for me is always in the letting go of attachment, trusting in the inherent intelligence & bounteousness of Life.

This happened for me earlier this season when I found out we weren’t supposed to use our bird feeders due to the avian flu epidemic — but then today finding out most migrations are over and the risk is low enough that we can use them again in Illinois.

It’s the choosing over and over again to stay close, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater by attaching too much meaning to every time nature responds in an unexpected way.