Tag Archives: home and garden

Harvesting Peony

4 June 2020

4 Comments

About this time every year, our yard bursts with colors with these big fragrant blooms. These are peonies, and their flowers only last for only two weeks at the most.

Even though it’s not officially summer yet, we are having a “heat wave” for the next several days as Iowa weather is fickly. These flowers wilt fast and they don’t like the heat so we decided to harvest them early. This also provided a photo op.

My wife agreed to be my model for this photoshoot.

We will definitely appreciate their beauty, even for just a few days. I mean the flowers. The model, that’s timeless.

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Bonus: While we were harvesting the peonies and doing the photoshoot, someone else, uninvitedly though definitely welcomed, came in to the scene. Here’s the video:

(*photos and video taken with an iPhone)

Alliums and Peonies

4 June 2019

2 Comments

This period is one of my favorite time of the year when it’s not too cold and not too hot either. Plus the flowers are blooming. Smelling flowers are much more enjoyable than shoveling snow, you know.

I would like to share some photos of what are blooming now in our garden, that have not been eaten yet by the deer or the wild rabbits.

Purple allium and white alliums:

By the way, Allium is the Latin word for garlic. As you can surmise these plants belongs to the family of onions, garlic and shallots. Since these blooms are in the family of onions, they have the trademark smell.

Peonies:

Peony is named after Paeon, the Greek god of medicine and healing. I don’t know if these flowers have curative properties. But one thing for sure, they are fragrant and maybe that’s healing enough.

These large flowers last about two weeks only, so might as well take the opportunity to gather them and display them inside as well.

Below are flowers not from our garden but from a grocery store. I included them here since I like my photo of it.

Despite allergies and all, there’s one unwritten rule in our household: No fake flowers allowed.

The last photo is the harvested peonies. And a selfie of course.

(*Credit to my wife, the master horticulturist; all photos taken with an iPhone)