more peonies

This is a different peony--still a single, but pinker than the one I used yesterday. With it are some white Dame's rocket and some pale pink columbine flowers (but you can't really see the latter in the photo). I didn't actually create this for the windowsill--I made it for a friend--but I figured it could do dual duty as a windowsill arrangement. I do love these relatively small, single peonies, because they are so much more versatile than the gigantic ones and their heads aren't so heavy they can't hold them up!

peonies (without irises!)

These peonies are SO much happier now that I've separated them from the irises I paired them with yesterday. Divas just to not play well together!  If these flowers don't look like peonies to you, it's because they are a very unusual variety. I first saw them at Pharsalia, a beautiful flower farm in Virginia, where the owner, Foxie Morgan, really didn't like them. I loved them for all the reasons she didn't--they're small, they look ragged, and they don't look like peonies! The prominence of their yellow/orange stamens makes them look more like casual wildflowers than stately peonies, and I like that.  I also love the greenish cast in their petals.

odd irises and peonies

This is an odd arrangement of odd flowers. The irises are an unusual color (sort of a peachy /lavender mix), the irises are on short stems (I plucked them from side shoots, not the tallest stems), and the small-flowered, single peonies are an unusual variety. There's actually so much "oddity" in this arrangement, that it makes it hard to read. And the green foliage is more visually important than I knew until I saw the photograph. I should go back to the drawing board with this...but I probably won't!

greens (of some sort)

These leaves came from little plants that grew up among some geraniums I overwintered on my bedroom windowsill. The plants' seeds must have been in the soil I used to pot up the geraniums. As I moved the geraniums to other pots this weekend, I salvaged the mustard-kale-or-some-other-leafy-vegetable leaves thinking I'd eat them, but they would up in this little vase instead. They're an awfully pretty blue-green.

Prestwould windowsill

This is a beautiful stone windowsill at Prestwould in Mecklenberg County, Va.  No vases here (or at least none visitors were allowed to touch) so my cousin Kate held this little bouquet of wildflowers in her hand. Included are clover, buttercups, and a little pink weed I couldn't identify.  I love thinking Lady Jean Skipwith, the 18th and early 19th century gardener who lived here, who lived here, knew this weed as well as I know my chickweeds.

poppy finale

And when the poppy petals fell off, even then, the result was beautiful.

popped top

No sooner had I posted my poppy bud photo yesterday than I walked downstairs and discovered the bud had popped its top! The flower now looks like this and the little cap that had encased the bud is resting on the windowsill. So beautiful.  I'm guessing the flower will open the rest of the way today. And, unrelated but for the record: I saw an active hummingbird's nest in the woods near my home yesterday--with female darting around nearby and occasionally sitting on the nest. I'd have never spotted it myself, but a neighbor, who's an active birder, drew my attention to it. Also saw baby bluebirds with down on their backs and chickadees so newly hatched they were still "naked" and pink.