Flower Power

These are my very favorite flowers!



PEONIES!!!

Lucky for me they are also the Indiana state flower, so they are EVERYWHERE right now. I'm in floral paradise! I love the bright colors and the wild pink hues they come in. Their soft, sweet rose-like smell sends me into raptures. I'm amorous over their playful little buds and the big ruffly blooms that droop all over the place. The way their scent fills my whole kitchen sends me into giggle fits. And I adore the crazy looks strangers give me when I knock on their doors to ask if I can please pick one. I don't love when I bend down to inhale their glory and in so doing inhale an ant that gets stuck in my sinus cavity for two days. Gross.

I wait all year for these flowers to bloom. Apparently I am not the only one...

Peonies by Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are
getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open ---pools of lace, white and pink ---

And all day under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise,
their red stems holding all that dampness and recklessness gladly and lightly,

And there it is again --- beauty
the brave, the exemplary, blazing open.
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?


You can definitely expect another ridiculous post about these beauties from me next May because I get this excited about them every year.