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Dee talked about the possibility of peonies living longer than their owners, and she also mentioned ordering her peonies from Klehm's Song Sparrow Nursery. That made me remember a plant given to me by a long-ago neighbor. Lee said that her lovely Paeonia tenuifolia came from the personal collection of a Klehm family member decades before we met. One autumn she split off a small piece and shared her Passalong peony with me. It grew for a few years before showing the first flower and by 1996 made the May bouquet in the old photo. I knew that trying to bring it here was equivalent to murder so regretfully left it behind. In my mind the fernleaf peony is still there, and still blooming every May.
I have a fernleaf peony as well--a doubleflowered one. It's slow to develop but it's getting a little bigger each year. They're so lovely and unique. I long to see mine, through the snowdrifts...
ReplyDeleteAnnie, I love that old photo. When the peonies bloom, you simply must make the trek up to Oklahoma to visit me. Thanks for the link, Love.~~Dee
ReplyDeleteOh, and I don't own a fernleaf. I'd like to have one though. I always want just one more thing. :)
ReplyDeleteHmmmm, a fernleaf peony? I'd like to have one of those!
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely photo. I can see why it makes you nostalgic :-)
ReplyDeleteI bet it was difficult to leave behind your IL garden. What fond memories. This winter you would be wishing to be in TX instead of IL. It has been a dilly.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that peony is still blooming here in Illinois--but not right now:) I love plants like these that last forever; it makes you think of all the stories they could tell, if they only could.
ReplyDeleteCatching up on reading today, and I just wanted to say I like your ingenious curtain you rigged up to protect your plants. I hope it did the trick; Texas has certainly had its share of the cold this winter, too.
You did the right thing...difficult as it may have been!
ReplyDeleteI just got the Klehm's catalog last week and it is garden porn, that is all there is to it. A beautiful catalog with stunning photos and a spectacular selection of plants, especially peonies. I've had hit-and-miss experiences with them. They do okay here but their show is all too brief.
ReplyDeleteFernleaf peony -- such lovely, lacy foliage that the blood-red blooms are almost a bonus. I have the right climate for it, but the wrong garden, with not enough air circulation. Any peony I've tried to grow has been felled by botrytis. Sniff. If you don't mind, I'll also dream of yours, still blooming in May.
ReplyDeleteI had never seen nor heard of fernleaf peonies until sometime in the 1990s when my mother and I were researching family history in a cemetery in Watertown, WI. While reading and copying tombstone inscriptions, I was distracted by this lovely lacy plant that looked like a peony (not blooming at the time). So I looked it up when I got home and thought I might like to have one - then I found out how much they were asking for them in the catalogs. Yeow. Way beyond my budget at the time. Well, at least you have memories of yours ;-)
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