Tree Peony Hatsugarasu

The sun never sets on the weeding to be done in the garden. This time of year most of the perennials have leafed out, but the volunteer seedlings are just showing themselves in the soft soil. The weeds are flowering and want to fling their seeds far and wide to insure their genetic material is perpetuated. What all these facts presented for your entertainment and education mean is that we are crawling around on hands and knees in the beds, trying to spare the chosen few baby plants, and yank the interlopers. On the back of the medium sized tree peony, hiding from the gardener who stands on the gravel path politely scanning for the opening of buds, the above bud is showing color.

From our previous tale of the opening of the large white tree peony, click
here to refresh your memory, we know that once the color shows on the buds, the whole flower can open in one day if the temperature is warm and the sun is shining. We skeedaddle inside to locate the camera, barely brushing the dirt from our knees and palms. It is already late afternoon, how will this affect the opening, we wonder. There are two buds on this plant, one much more tightly closed than the other. We will try and capture the stages of unfurling for both.

The next morning, with the rays of the sun not yet visible over the horizon beyond the arbor, the flash on the camera reflects the dew on petal and leaf still present from the moisture in the air.

At midday there is shade from the tall exbury azaleas growing behind this peony. The hidden bud is entirely open, The front bud is still tightly wound, but is showing signs of trying to burst free from the green covering.

By late afternoon, the second bud is more than half way open.

Dinnertime comes around, time to go inside and try and throw together something edible and relax. But first, another round with the camera shows the dawdling bud to be at a most photogenic stage of bloom.

Flower number one is full blown. It will be downhill from now on as the petals will not be able to join together again in the evenings.

Here is the nearly black Japanese tree peony, Paeonia suffruticosa’ Hatsugarasu’ which means the early crow, with its two flowers for this year. Thank you, Mister Crow, for gracing us with your wine colored ornaments.

Just to keep in the wine colored theme, this columbine, aquilegia ‘Barlow Black’ has started its bloom period. The columbines are sometimes difficult to photograph because the blooms face downward. This beauty is growing on the four foot high wall behind the main house. One can stand on the gravel path below and look up into the face of the flower without doing a contortion act. Put this one on the ‘remember this’ list, plant the hanging bell type flowering plants along the wall.

Just in case you didn’t think there would be any azalea photos in this post, we will end with the view looking toward the knot garden steps. There are two large unknown yellow decidous azaleas on each side of the steps, with knockout roses in front of each. The light pink dianthus is visible edging the steps that we wrote about yesterday. There is a dark pink evergreen azalea, Girard’s Rose, in the background under the pink dogwood. Only now noticed are two rosebuds just below the yellow azalea on the right, from Rosa ‘Moonlight’. The flower progression is speeding up, and we are ready!

Frances

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~ by fairegarden on April 24, 2008.