A Peony For Your Thoughts

Saturday blogging is not my norm, but I'm rolling right along in the A-Z Blog Challenge and don't want to drop the ball now. Today's post will be short and sweet. I think. I'm enjoying my theme (The Things We Keep: Ordinary Objects From A-Z), and had to get a little creative today, but it works. You'll see. 

Day 16-P is for Peony

About six years ago I finally got a peony plant for our garden. My mom had quite the green thumb and grew gorgeous flowers of all shapes, size, and variety, but I don't think we ever had a peony. 

I fell in love with them in England because my next door neighbor there had a back garden full of them. So much beauty! He had many heirloom varieties and then the more familiar too and he would tell me about them on occasion. I was determined to have a peony in my own back garden someday. 

Fast forward, and we'd been in this house about four years when we finally purchased a small, but healthy looking plant. Hubs put it in a spot we thought was fine, but turns out it wasn't fine and by the  middle of the summer it looked deader than a doornail. 

Sidebar-did you know that expression deader than a doornail dates back to the 14th century? 

Anyway, the peony appeared to be dead but I could not let it go so hubs dutifully dug it up and moved it to another spot closer to the lake. Like my mama, hubs also has a very green thumb but he felt sure this was a lost cause. It was basically a little stub of a plant, scrawny and all stem, no leaves. 

Well don't you know the next year that little stub popped up! yay!, but then she just sat there. Boo. She didn't die but she didn't exactly live either. Didn't grow even a millimeter and of course didn't bloom. Hubs thought we should get rid of it, but I said it wasn't hurting anything so we left it. 

Year three same thing. Year four nothing. It became something of a joke between hubs and I, but for some reason, without actually saying it, we agreed to leave this six inch 'shrub' alone. 

Year five. It grew! What??? Now it didn't grow a lot, but it grew leaves and maybe an inch or two in height. We for sure didn't think it would ever bloom. 

Well guess what? 

Year six.

Still a tiny little thing, but today I saw TWO blooms ready to burst open on that plant and I cannot tell you how exciting it is. 

I'm viewing this as a testament to resilience, proving we can thrive even after a long dry season. When this tiny mighty beauty blooms I'll be sure to share. 

So glad we kept her!