The plopping of the peonies

I don’t have a particularly green thumb, especially when it comes to growing flowers in the garden. Over the 10 years I’ve lived in this house I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on perennial flowers (I don’t even bother with annuals … planting flowers each spring isn’t a chore I want anywhere near my radar) and in the end they all just … go away. Whether I plant them in the wrong place, whether they get crowded out by weeds, or whether they get eaten or trampled by my pet tortoises I do not know. But I plant them, and they disappear.

Luckily my land did come with some established flowers. There are some fantastic batches of lillies in a couple areas, and I also have about a half dozen peony plants. I really enjoy the peonies. The large plants grow without any help from me, and all I have to do is keep them under control.

My peonies are the really large double hybrids. They’re big and fluffy and very, very heavy. So as soon as the stems start filling up with blooming flowers, the plants (bushes, really) start to flop over. And before long, all their petals start to plop onto the ground. The aftermath of a beautiful double hybrid peony flower is a gruesome mess.

This year I decided I would take better advantage of these beautiful flowers by clipping them and bringing them inside. I figured this would help keep the stems just a little bit lighter, and then, of course, I could enjoy their beauty indoors. So last weekend I brought in a few and placed them on my coffee table.

This morning, I awoke to the plopping peony petal carnage:

Luckily, there are always plenty more waiting for me outside:

I wish I had more white peonies to mix with the pink, but the pink far outnumber white. Plus, I moved the white plant last year so it’s still working on growing back up to its previous state of glory.