Why I Oughta...

One of the shortest, but brightest bloom seasons in our garden is peony season.  It lasts just a couple of weeks, but it shines bright.  This post is going up in mid-June, but these photos are from the end of May.  Our peonies started to bloom in the last week of May and peaked right before the end of the month.   After a few years of lackluster peony seasons, I moved all of them out of the back beds into the Kitchen Curved bed near the patio and along the driveway in the IB2DWs bed.  Both locations with *more* sun than just about anywhere else in our garden.   That's led to some better blooms.  Including this year when the Sarah Bernhardt peony planted IB2DWs has put on it's best show to date.  Here, below are a few of the flowers on this one pink herbaceous peony: And blooms from the Duchesse De Nemours White Peony that I planted in Spring 2021 : The season doesn't last long (and this year, I didn't preserve any in the fridge like I di...

A few days ago, I posted some photos showing the big peony arrangement that I successfully stored in the fridge for about a month and talked about how peony blooming season is so short.  In addition to cutting and storing some peonies for later this Summer, I also cut and put out on the counter a couple of vases full of peonies when they were blooming.   I've been working on the Disneyland Roses a bit more this early Summer, too.  Paying attention to them water-wise.  And, spraying them with both an insecticide and fungicide as often as I remember to do out there.  That's produced Floribunda rose stems that are *knock wood* holding more leaves and having less pests than last year.   One of my 2025 goals was to continue to have countertop arrangements with cut flowers .  Here's a round-up of a number of cut flowers we've had on our counter the past six weeks or so. We have white double 'Duchesse de Nemours' peonies in the back .  And some...