Are peonies my favorite flowers in the world?

Yes, all other flowers are merely accompaniment to the peony. But those yellow columbine? I grew them from seed!

Back when the house had drug dealers upstairs and the lawn wasn't lawn but a gravel driveway and the yard had nothing but weeds and bigger weeds, I went out and carved a 3' x 3' foot space and planted six peonies. They still flourish today (NOTE: one of the many great things about peonies is they live 20 - 25 years and are one of the longest-lasting perennials).

That was the beginning of the garden. Who knew I would love to garden? Not me, for sure. I never had before this time. My dad always tried to garden, but he traveled so much that whatever he planted would always get ruined cause no one watered his gardens and then he would come home and be so upset. But every year, there he'd be planting, traveling, and sobbing about what miserable, do-nothing wretches he had for kids (and we were actually quite worse than that-- poor man).

My Nana had a wonderful garden. When we would go up to visit her in the summertime to her house in New Hampshire, I would be in the garden most of the day. I memorized my first poem in her garden from a little wooden sign she had posted by dark purple delphinium. "The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the birds for mirth, you are nearer God's heart in a garden, than anywhere else on earth."

Then we moved. Growing up outside Philadelphia, summer nights we would go to Longwood Gardens. This amazing place-- some part of the Dupont estate-- had fountains everywhere and hundreds of acres of gardens. They had enomous greenhouses that had been the estate's solariums or conservatories or some such thing. I never liked being inside the green house with its thick, wet air and the stink of tropical flowers and would run back outside.

One very, very hot summer night, we (my mom, my dad, my two brothers, my two sisters and me) were dragging our humid little bodies out of the gardens heading home to beds where we would sweat and try to sleep despite the drenching heat. When all of a sudden, my mom took off her shoes and climbed up to the edge of the fountain. She stepped in and turned to my dad. She was laughing and getting sprayed and the fountain was lit up so from where we stood on the dark path, it looked sparkly and magical. And then my dad took his shoes off and rolled up the bottom of his pants (though he got totally wet so I can't imagine why he would bother, but he was French that way) and clambered in with her.

You would think we would have all followed suit, but we didn't. We stood there in amazement, perhaps our jaws hung wide. There was our perfectly coiffed, immaculately dressed mom splashing and giggling in the fountain. She who did not allow jumping on the bed or sliding down the bannister. She who did not allow us to eat anything without a plate underneath it. And there was my dad, holding her hand laughing out loud, doing that goofy dance thing he would do.

And to this day, that is the only time I ever saw them play together.

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