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
5/23/2024
Rain easing off from a dawn storm. The peony buds look almost ready to open. A raincrow croons.
4/9/2024
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.
6/14/2023
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.
6/8/2023
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.
6/4/2023
Raininess without rain. The peonies remain unbowed. Half-grown bracken fronds in my thin-soiled yard are already turning yellow.
9/1/2021
Rain thickens toward mid-morning as the ex-hurricane moves through. One cricket still calls from the shelter of peony leaves.
5/10/2021
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.
4/13/2021
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.
6/5/2020
Overcast. The first milky-white peony is open, facing the road where a sparrow struggles to swallow a large green caterpillar.
4/15/2020
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.
4/26/2018
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.
4/8/2017
Two degrees below freezing and crystal clear. I worry for the tender young leaves of the peonies, paused mid-unfurl—translucent pink commas.
6/14/2015
A chipmunk scurries through the garden with a wad of dried leaves between her teeth and disappears beneath a flowerless clump of peonies.