Peony: Perfection in... late July!?

How on earth can there be peonies for sale at Pike Place Market in Seattle on July 29? How? In Michigan, the plant starts to bloom in May and all varieties are completely gone by late June.

My first thought is that these blooms must be flown in from Alaska. My second thought is that I can't believe I get to live in a place where peonies are available for sale in late July. Truly. 

Flowers are my thing and peonies are a favorite among favorites. 

Remember in 2008, when I blogged about saving peony buds and delaying their bloom for weeks with wax? Well, Alaska has made life so much easier for us!

On this same day in late July, the market had this beautiful selection of currants,
as well as bountiful flower bouquets. 

Peony Farm: A Delightful Trip to Sequim

I don't know what's on your bucket list, but you need to add "Visit a Peony Farm in full bloom." 

This magnificent peony is named Lavon. I can't get over the shape and texture of this variety - the bloom is almost completely round. I would love to be able to make flower arrangements with these happy blooms. 

This peony farm is called Peony Farm Gardens (website and facebook: ilovepeonies.com) and it is located on the Olympic Peninsula near the town of Sequim (pronounced Skwim). I feel like I have found a hidden treasure.

We visited on June 4 this year and every plant was in bloom. I have never seen anything like it! Peonies are best when planted in the fall, so this garden is a showcase to help gardeners choose which varieties they want to grow. You can order now and they will charge and ship in the fall. How can we be expected to decide?!

Though I do know that I picked the variety called "Seashell" over and over, so that pinky/coral bloom (above) is a must. I also loved Coral Charm, Felix Supreme and Gay Paris.

The garden offers some cut flowers for sale, but honestly the choices were only the classic solids (a Sarah Bernhardt-like rose pink and another in deep magenta) which would not be the kind of bouquet I'd want. 

If the owner would offer to cut a few stems based on the color the customer wanted, I think they would sell a lot more bouquets. But...maybe that is not want they want to do. Maybe selling cut flowers would deplete their showy gardens and we wouldn't want that! I want their business to prosper so that we can do something as wonderful as plan a trip to a peony farm.

Sequim, Washington is a 2 1/2 hour drive from the east side of Seattle and arriving during peony season has made it our best road trip yet.  

Can you imagine walking these fields? I kept thinking, "If you plant it, they will come." And we did!

Visual Vitamins: Peonies with the color of Grace

A graceful bouquet. I was at Pike Place Market on Mother's Day and I made up a bouquet for myself with 3 peachy pink peonies with yellow stamen and 5 yellow tulips with pink at the base of each bloom. They looked better than I could have imagined and as they aged, their color faded and I liked the arrangement even more.

Flowers are visual vitamins and you will benefit from a dose every day.

Piano Forte: Personal Touches Based on Color

I love this vignette on the piano in our living room.  Specific and unexpected touches that make it look like our house.  

First, you must have music on the piano. Just because you have little ones learning Three Blind Mice in a piano book designed in the 60's, doesn't mean that you have to leave it on display. When our church changed hymnals, they offered the old ones to the congregation.  I love having a meaningful piece of music highlighted with a silver page holder. I can't play the piano, but my husband might see this as encouragement to learn O Holy Night.

I pulled together small items from around the house that were black. I wanted to ground the accessories a bit and echo the black table I have between our two off white loveseats in the same room.

What 3 items did I choose for the top of the piano? A black sushi bowl used as a vase for peonies. A black and gold tin tea box that I bought as a memento in Paris at Mariage Freres. And a sheet of dollhouse seed packets, framed in black, looks very much like art to a gardener and dollhouse enthusiast like me. The art on the wall above the piano is a piece of vintage sheet music that I photographed and enlarged.

This collection is more interesting than a set of silver picture frames that I might have out at a different time of year, and are all conversation piece on their own, should anyone ask about the items.  I think the most important part about collecting and arranging items is that the items are believeable. I didn't set out to buy items to go together, I walked around the house pulling from my own stash.  Over time, buy items that speak to you.  When you arrange them later, the history of each time (where you found it; who gave it to you; what it reminds you of) will make your storytelling all the more interesting.

Do you like my design?  Perhaps you'd like to customize the top of your piano this week.  Piano forte, indeed.

My Sentimental Garden

I am a sentimental fool...and luckily, I married a man who is too!  When I went to Paris with my parents to celebrate my mom's 70th birthday, we were gone for just over two weeks.  

Around Day 10, Dan was out of sorts and ended up wandering the garden center. He bought and planted a peony for our garden.  He said that when he saw one that was called "Gay Paree," he simply couldn't resist.  Isn't that wonderful?

I'd loved it for years and then we had some kind of natural flooding in the peony bed.  Our area has a lot of clay in the soil and the heavy rains made parts of the yard more like a clay bathtub holding water.  I lost most of my peonies to rot.  Needless to say, it was not a delight, so I haven't talked about it much.  Fast forward to last Fall.  Dan saw "some signs of life" in two peony plants (that haven't bloomed in two years) and moved them to our side bed.

Tah-dah! It is June and both plants lived, and bloomed, and one of them was "Gay Paree!"  It wasn't until this bud opened that I knew which peony had survived.  Thank you, Mother Nature, for helping this sentimental plant "hang on" until we could move it to a better spot.

Do you have any sentimental plants?

Perfect Peony Bouquet

My foyer has never looked so pretty.  After losing my small hedge of peonies to a flood (broken soaker hose) last year, I am starting over (sniff) and have bought 3 peony plants and planted them on the other side of the house, just to be safe.

The established plants had 2 buds each and I am reaping the rewards the week.  Fringed with lilacs, they look gorgeous in my pink glass vase.  How did I have such a perfect pink vase?  Simple, last Summer I painted the outside of an empty glass jar (from either spaghetti sauce or canned peaches, I can't tell) with craft paint.  Once it is dry, it looks like old-fashioned pink glass and I love it.

I am happiest when I can cut flowers and arrange a bouquet for the house.  Have you started bringing flowers indoors yet?  

Starting Over...a Gardener's Tale

I love peonies and a garden mishap is causing me to have to start all over - (sniff).  I had a bed of peonies for ten years that gave me season after season of delight.  But the bed started to show signs of disease the year before last, and then they failed to produce at all last Spring, which was the result of a soaker- hose-gone-wrong that flooded the bed and caused them to rot. 

This is the life a gardener...sometimes things have to change in order to flourish.  The flooding prompted us to move a row of hydrangeas and they loved the change and looked terrific the rest of the Summer.  So this Spring I am starting from scratch and planting a peony bed.  I know it will be some time before they will produce blooms, but I need to get them started the sooner the better. 

My favorites from my last bed were:

"Raspberry Sundae" - which looks like a scoop of vanilla ice cream with raspberry sauce on top and in the bowl.

"Gay Paree" - that my husband bought and planted while I was in Paris with my parents.  It is magenta with fluffy cream petals in the center.

Do you have any peonies that I should consider?  What is your favorite?  Thanks and wish me luck!

Ice Bucket Bouquet

This bouquet was assembled with peony donations!

I've been having a bit of a peony panic in my yard.  I went from having 6 happy and productive plants, to one plant that gives me 3 blooms - tops.  Is the soil in my bed too wet?  Did the plants get diseased?  I had the same problem last year and now that I'm in the same boat, I'm taking a leaf/soil sample to the garden center for some advice.  You can see my only peony in this photo: it is called "Gay Paree" and has magenta petals with a creamy center.

The rest of this gorgeous bouquet (I'm a florist at heart) was made with peony donations and a few "Royal Amethyst" roses.  My neighbor and best friend both offered up some of their blooms so that I could still make flower arrangements.  Thank goodness!  I couldn't miss having something this wonderful in the house.  And I discovered a distressed silver ice bucket in the basement - it must have been my mother's mother's from long ago.  I gave it a good shine and it is perfect.  

I'm making flower arrangements fit for a movie star.  Love it!

Pop Art

Do you remember my trip to the grocery superstore, Jungle Jim's and my foray into the pop can aisle looking for vases?  I bought this beautiful pink can (some exotic flavor from Thailand?) with this display in mind.  But the peony from my friend Kim's yard is so full, you can hardly see the design!  I promise to fill this soda can with lavender roses later in the Summer and show it to you again.

Even though the can doesn't show, this simple flower arrangement took my breath away every time I came into the kitchen.  If you have friends or neighbors with peonies in bloom, ask if you can have just one.  Look at the delight it can bring!

Peony Gardens

All I had to hear was "Peony Festival" and I was "in!" I knew there would only be a few days when my schedule and Mother Nature's would overlap, so I watched the calendar carefully and drove to Ann Arbor on a sunny afternoon to see the peonies.

As I researched the garden and my route, I learned that the Nichols Arboretum has one of the largest collections of historic peonies in North America - and it is only an hour from my house!
The Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum is part of the University of Michigan and the arboretum is adjacent to U of M's central campus in Ann Arbor.
If you are interested, I encourage you to download the "Self-guided Peony Tour" from the first link above. It is the tool that I used to find my way to the oldest and rarest peony specimens. Have you ever seen a peony from 1850?
Isn't it lovely to think of all of the people that have enjoyed its blooms for the past 160 years? More than a century of productivity is an accomplishment in any field, I love that, in this case, the "field" is actually dirt!

Beautiful Jam Jar Vases

I want you to be on the lookout for beautiful "vases" everywhere. I found this gorgeous jar of Crabtree and Evelyn blueberry preserves (yum!) at a discount shop called Homegoods. 

It seemed as if they had just received a whole shipment of products from England. I bought some wonderful boxes of shortbread and tea for hostessing and one gorgeous jar of preserves!

Once the jar was empty, I brushed the label with a layer of Mod Podge. This protects the label from water splashes and will keep it perfect for years to come.

Remember, look for containers that are beautiful and interesting. Inspiration is everywhere!

Epitome of Delight

Today we are going to take a moment to reflect on the magnificent
"Raspberry Sundae" peony.

The giant cream petals represent a scoop of vanilla ice cream, while the pink petals are the sauce on top, as well as some pooling in the saucer below. Have you ever heard of anything so cool?

This variety is the epitome of what I try to blog about: things that are both beautiful and interesting.

In this photograph, you can also see that I converted a Lorina sparkling lemonade bottle into a candle (!) using a ceramic bottle candle with wick. So pretty and romantic. It is my kind of repurposing.

Ladies in Waiting

What's so amazing about this picture? It was taken on July 17th! My peonies bloom in early June, so how do I have a fresh bouquet 6 weeks later? I have found a florist's trick that really works. When peony buds are about the size of a ping pong ball and showing color, cut them from the plant leaving a 6-8 inch stem. Dip the cut end in hot wax to seal. Wrap bud & stem in damp paper toweling and seal in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for up to two months. When you are ready for a spectacular bouquet, simply recut the stems to remove the wax and place the buds in room temperature water. Your "ladies in waiting" should open within a day or two. Love it!

The Perfect Gift

I drove up to my aunt's house and saw the most spectacular peony blooming by her front walk. She said that it was a gift from a friend. Can you think of a lovelier present?

When I tried to identify it online, I came across the neatest peony website. You enter the peony info (color, flower type, bloom time) and it shows you which peony it might be! I think that this is "Lotus Bloom."

Fauchon Cookies

It may not be what Fauchon had in mind when designing their cookie tins, but could there be a prettier vase? I simply slide an empty jam jar inside and have an instant waterproof container for my peony arrangements.

I am trying something new this year. I read that you can "postpone" peony blossoms for over a month! The instructions were to clip buds that were about to open, dip the stems in wax, wrap completely in damp toweling and refrigerate. So right now I have about 12 "ladies in waiting" in my fridge downstairs that I prepared in May. I will try to make them bloom the week of July 7th. Wish me luck!

Garden Notebook

My digital camera is my garden notebook. I like to imagine that someday I will have time to keep a journal loaded with all of my plant information and bloom times etc in it. 

But for now I simply look on my computer to see when my pictures from the garden were taken. The date is captured automatically when you upload your shots. 

Today my peonies started blooming and I wondered if they were early, so I looked in my photography folder. I know that this Raspberry Sundae peony (because it looks like a scoop of vanilla ice cream with raspberry sauce poured over it) bloomed on June 2nd last year and on June 10th in 2005. 

Neat, huh? No crazy record keeping for me. The date on my digital camera does it all. When should I have a friend over to see the hydrangeas? My "records" say the third week in July. 

So get out your camera and start your own garden journal.