dear, sweet peonies~

How I love you so.

You, dearest of flowers, are so beautiful.  Just plain lovely.

I see you there, in neighbor's yards, and can't help but to go traipsing across their lawns for an opportunity to get a closer look and to deeply inhale with my face buried in your petals.

I breathe in your sweet (and not at all overpowering, thank you for that) perfume and am taken back to another life where surely I must have been a content old soul sitting on a warm lawn surrounded by some of your ancestors and watching the clouds roll by.  Surely, because that's how you make me feel.  Probably there was some tea involved as well, maybe an old blanket thrown down and a good friend or two sitting with me enjoying the day as it slowly rolled by.  The best way for a day to pass, of course.

Recently we pulled (gently) from the ground several of your delicate little shoots, hoping to get you settled in a new and more appropriate location where we hope you will be able to grow and thrive and bloom.

See you in our own yard next year, perhaps?  Oh, I hope so.  And if not, I'll keep waiting patiently and continue my jaunts across stranger's yards to get my fill of you in all your short lived blooming glory.