Peony season

I grew up in a climate without peonies—our winters were too warm for them to grow. It wasn’t until I moved to Washington that I spent any time with the flowers.

It wasn’t until I was gifted a bouquet of peonies that I fell in love with them.

I almost never buy cut flowers* but I was hosting a guest from Japan. One day I took her downtown, to the art museum and to Pike Place Market. It was the middle of peony season and the flower vendors boasted bouquet after bouquet of marble-round peony buds. They start out rather unimpressive looking.

My guest wanted to buy me a bunch of peonies. And because reciprocal kindness is important in Japanese culture, I let her.

She left shortly after, but the peonies stayed with me. And for a full week I watched them open. I didn’t know it then, but these peonies were a cultivar called Coral Charm. They start out a dark coral pink and, as they open and age, they fade to a soft ivory. It’s remarkable. Each day I sat at my computer and watched the transformation—lush petals opening and fading and finally falling. By the end of the week, I was a convert.

I still don’t buy cut flowers often, but I do try to grab a bunch of Coral Charm peonies each spring. They are an early season bloomer and sometimes I miss out.

I have peonies in my yard now as well. They need cold winters (zone 8 and lower) and take a few years to get established, but once they are it’s likely they will outlive us all. Herbaceous peonies can live 100 years. Some cultures believed they had the power to protect the home they were planted near.

Peony season is starting to wane where I live—the Coral Charms are done and we are into the late season cultivars. Soon they will all be gone until next year, when I will again look forward to watching the transformation. How these tiny balls turn into glorious petals and then, gracefully, gradually, fade away.

As Mary Oliver wrote, in her poem Peonies:

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?

—Mary Oliver

To be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever.

I fell so in love with Peonies that I wrote a book about them. It’s a small but packed-with-information and gorgeously illustrated by Emily Poole. And it has a Coral Charm peony on the cover. To learn more about these beautiful flowers, their fascinating history and cultural background, how to grow them, how to arrange them—even how to cook with them—check out a copy (ebook version to be released next month).

But really, peonies are to be enjoyed in their moment—that is one of their charms. Their late spring season is fleeting, and they won’t be back for a year. It’s time to soak them up, enjoy them all, and let them go.

To be wild and perfect for a moment.

I hope your week is going well. I hope you are finding the time to enjoy what is blooming where you are.

—Tara

* I almost never buy cut flowers because the environmental impact of the floral industry is pretty awful. About 80% of cut flowers in the US are grown outside the country, often with chemicals not necessarily approved for domestic use, and shipped from a great distance. There is a strong movement to support local growers, however, inspired by Debra Prinzing’s 2013 book, Slow Flowers. You can read more about the issue here.

Something else to enjoy: my books