Grandma's Peony

                                                                     

Hubby's mother was the youngest of seven children.   With four older brothers, the girls were never asked to do farm work, that was for the boys.. She would often look totally horrified as she listened to her granddaughters talk about helping out with farm chores. However, she couldn't deny the farming genes that ran deep in her make up.  While she was a meticulous housekeeper and a superb cook, her true joy was her yard and garden.

Hubby was in high school when his parents moved from the home farm to a new house in town.  Grandma adapted by turning the entire back yard into a large vegetable garden where she grew enough to feed their family for the year.  She had everything from strawberries, blackberries and raspberries to asparagus, corn, green beans (delicious Kentucky Wonders), squash, cucumbers (for pickles) peas, lima beans, onions, lettuce, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, --you name it she probably had it.  Each row was kept weed free and carefully maintained for the best yield.  She cultivated, picked and canned about everything they needed for a family of growing boys.  As much as she reveled in bringing this bounty from the earth (those farmer genes),  her true joy came from her flowers.

She planted flowers everywhere...interspersed among the rows of vegetables would be a glorious row of bright zinnias, staked next to the tomatoes would be the stately stalks of gladiolas, and tuberoses would perfume the air from the outside rows.  The carport would bloom with pots of geraniums, petunias, marigolds, and impatiens.  Around the carport were Iris of every color, giant phlox, and spring bulbs. It was a riot of color, all thriving under her loving care.

However, her pride and joy were the peonies that marched in a bushy row down the side yard. 
                                                                       
As a child on the home place, she had learned her love of flowers from her mother, who had created a playground of color, texture and scent for her youngest daughter.  During the cool mornings, mother and child would carefully tend the flowers that filled the farmhouse yard.  As they visited and worked the mother would tell the child about the flowers that grew there.  The one that was their special favorite was a deep, pink, almost red, peony.  This particular peony had been brought to the farm by the child's mother, as start from a peony from her mother's yard. Carefully cultivated it came to represent the passing of generations and the memories of a mother. 

When it came time to leave the home place and move to town, my mother-in-law carefully dug a start of this beautiful peony to bring to her new home.  Here, in her new yard, it joined with the white and pale pink peonies in a shout of jubilant color. When we would wander the yard on a visit, she would always stop and gently caress the deep pink blooms and talk of her mother.  These plants were living memories of the woman who had raised her with love.

When it came time to sell the house, after my mother-in-law was gone,  Hubby and I made one last trip to the yard.  It had been years since she had been able to plant her garden or care for her flowers, but the magnificent peonies still came back every year and bloomed their declaration of spring.  It was past time for their blooms and I stood looking at the row of green bushes.  "I think they were here....or were they there?"  I muttered, trying to remember exactly which ones were the deep pink ones.  Hubby patiently dug a bit of that root and bit of this one, until I had several starts in our box.  We carried them home and set them out in a bed beside the house.  It was a hot, dry summer and I spent hours watering the struggling plants and alternately begging them not to die and threatening to pull them up if they did. 

I am not a gardener by choice, but kneeling in the beds, pulling weeds, fertilizing, staking, and watering I felt a time of closeness to the little woman who had been a mother to me most of my life.  She had no daughters and I had no mother, so we had turned to each other and formed a bond of love.  Different as we were (or maybe not so different) we shared a closeness born of love of the man, who was her son and my spouse, and our children, which led to a love of each other.  I was blessed to have had her in my life..

The peonies survived and started coming up the next spring.  Anxiously we watched the green stems become little shrubs and finally showed little green buds.  The days passed and the buds began to show color and open into massive, brilliant blooms.  With bated breath, we waited to see if the plants would bloom deep pink.  The first to open were white, then a lovely soft pink.  My heart sunk, what if I hadn't gotten the right one.  Finally, the last plant began to open its blooms.  Slowly it revealed the deep ruby color of Grandma's special peony. 

Spindly, but sturdy, the little plant lifted up its radiant bloom that held all the memories of the special ladies who loved them so.

I know Grandma was there with me during that time of caring for her peonies...because left by myself I surely would have killed it as I have so many other plants she gave me.

Thanks, Grandma, for leaving me such a living legacy of your love.