Another cool morning. The chipmunk who lives under the lilac races across the road, tail like the upright stem on a quarter note. The peonies’ pale fists are opening, one by one.
peonies
May 23, 2024
Rain easing off from a dawn storm. The peony buds look almost ready to open. A raincrow croons.
April 9, 2024
In the half-light, a Louisiana waterthrush’s jumble of notes. The sky is nearly clear. Peonies are raising red hands out of the earth.
June 14, 2023
The rains continue. The last peony blossom collapsed in the night, and the last purple iris has opened. Where mowed grass had died, there’s a blush of green.
June 8, 2023
Peony leaves shriveling from drought even as their antique, cream-white heads still bloom. Ashen skies. A Cooper’s hawk skims the treetops without setting off a single squirrel.
June 4, 2023
Raininess without rain. The peonies remain unbowed. Half-grown bracken fronds in my thin-soiled yard are already turning yellow.
September 1, 2021
Rain thickens toward mid-morning as the ex-hurricane moves through. One cricket still calls from the shelter of peony leaves.
May 10, 2021
The stream is quieter than I would’ve thought after so much rain. The sun comes out, and the one ant tending to a peony bud moves her antennae.
April 13, 2021
Under a slowly clearing sky, the new, red-green peony leaves are still beaded with last night’s rain. No trains running; it’s all birdsong.
June 5, 2020
Overcast. The first milky-white peony is open, facing the road where a sparrow struggles to swallow a large green caterpillar.
April 15, 2020
Sunny and cold. The peony sprouts are at that stage of development where it’s hard not to see them as little red hands—waving, drowning.
April 26, 2018
A blue wound opens in the clouds and heals over again. In the garden, pink claws that may become peonies if a late frost doesn’t kill them.
April 8, 2017
Two degrees below freezing and crystal clear. I worry for the tender young leaves of the peonies, paused mid-unfurl—translucent pink commas.
June 14, 2015
A chipmunk scurries through the garden with a wad of dried leaves between her teeth and disappears beneath a flowerless clump of peonies.