Last year I read copious books about peonies, learning the varieties and heritage of so many. My love for this beauties grew deeper and I created a fund to be able to invest in them with the dream of becoming a peony farmer. That fall I planted 13 different varieties of peonies in the garden. I found myself thinking about them during the winter, wondering how they were doing inside mother earth and the bed of organic matter I had laid them into. As the snow left and the many shades of green emerged so did the peonies. It was so exciting the patience that was so easy over the winter was waning in the growing anticipation of meeting my new friends. Today I gifted my first peony bouquet to a new mom and it felt amazing to hand my new friends to her husband knowing the joy they would bring her and their home as they celebrated new life in their family.
I am not sure when peonies made me fall in love with them, but now my daughter calls them my spirit plant and I am sure that long after I am gone from this earth, this plant will bring forward memories of me to my children. Maybe they will plant them and enjoy taking in their intoxicating scent and recall fonds memories of me. Somehow envisioning their faces in a peony taking in a deep breath of their sweet scent makes me happy. For the joy they bring I am so grateful.
I couldn’t sleep so I sat with Claude AI and together we wrote the following. It was a fun collaboration and I appreciated the experience. I hope you enjoy.
The Peony's Promise
In the garden of wanting, we plant our hopes as bare roots into mother earth— each one a secret love letter sealed with the wax of winter's patience.
The peony knows the art of making us wait. The first pop of green life emerges from the awakening earth. Month after month, we tend the sturdy stems, water the promise of what's to come, our hearts learning the quiet discipline of faith in unseen blooms.
And then—oh, then— the first crack appears, a blush of pink bleeding through the armor of anticipation. We hold our breath as petals unfold like whispered secrets finally shared, each layer a revelation of silk and scent and sudden joy.
For three weeks, maybe four, the garden becomes a sanctuary of abundance so fierce it makes us dizzy with gratitude. Heavy heads bow under the weight of their own magnificence, some destined for the gentle knife, gathered into arms like newborns, carried to kitchens where they spill their perfume into mason jars, become gifts pressed into the hands of friends who gasp at such extravagance.
In living rooms they hold court, their brief lives doubled in reflection— once in soil, once in love shared, teaching us that some joys grow larger when given away, that beauty multiplies in the passing from hand to heart.
Then, as quickly as they came, the petals fall like snow in June, both in garden and in vase, carpeting the earth with memories of beauty that burned so bright it left us changed, teaching us that some loves are worth the wait, worth the ache of empty seasons, worth the tender tending of hope in darkness.
And we are already dreaming of next year's promise, already whispering to winter: Make us wait again. Make us worthy of such joy.