Peonies

                                        Peonies
            Sales have been high for liniment at the Bath Store.  Folks were saying the garden club girls needed it after pattin’ themselves on the back with the success of their big plant sale.
   The women might have been happy but the husbands complained they bought and brought home more stuff than they took.
   The object of the plant sale for the ladies is to thin out and get rid of perennials you don’t need, but there is always something else that you do need.  (Me included.)

   Which reminds me of the coral peony blooming now.  A few years ago  I saw a picture of it in a garden catalog and knew I needed it.  Peonies are one of my favorites. Grandpa used to call them pinys.  But he knew how to grow them.

   There was a time when we grew them to have them bloom for Decoration Day (Memorial Day).  It was the custom to take fresh cut flowers from your garden to decorate the graves of loved ones.  Some folk put the flowers in water in mason jars.  Others covered coffee cans with aluminum foil for their container.  The flowers didn’t last long, kinda like life.
   But the climate has changed.  Peonies and maybe iris are long-gone by Memorial Day.   One is left to scrounge round for roses  or lilies to take to the cemetery.
   Give me the live ones any day over plastic flowers. I know it’s a matter of preference.  But doesn’t everyone love a peony?