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I wish Peonies bloomed all summer long!

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I wish Peonies bloomed all summer long. They are so lovely, so delicate and oh so short lived!

My peonies are long gone … they finished blooming in late June, but I just realized that I never posted a photo of my Peonies.

I only took pictures of my Peony Pecher Peonies this year. My Karl Rosenfield Peonies bloomed, but we were going through a very rainy period when they bloomed and then right after that it finally warmed up here in Toronto at the end of June and the blooms faded fast … too fast for me to capture them while they still looked beautiful!

Anyway … here’s a picture of my lovely Peony Peacher bloom.

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This peony has a beautiful scent. In fact, after a huge rain storm in June, back when we discovered one of trellises had broken and snapped some rose branches, I gathered some lovely scented Baron Prevost roses, one peony and a few hosta leaves for accent and made a bouquet to bring indoors to enjoy. The rose and peony scent filled the house for two or three days! Once the rose scent faded, the peony scent took over for another day or so. Simply lovely to have such scented flowers indoors!

Do you grow Peonies? Do you bring a cut flower or two indoors so you can enjoy their loveliness and beautiful scent? What other flowers do you enjoy bringing indoors?






A broken trellis brings indoor rose delights

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Last week we had a lot of rain (this week’s a heat wave and a few thunderstorms), and since the roses are heavy with blooms we had a little mishap.

My Baron Prevost and Jack Cartier roses are standing tall near a wooden trellis that’s attached to the fence. I’ve also lightly attached some of the rose branches to the trellis (the trellis is mainly for the clematis that grows in front of it) and well, I guess the floppy rose branches got too heavy after the rain and they actually caused part of the trellis to break.

Upon discovering the broken trellis we fixed it with some 2×2’s – it’s very sturdy now and tied back some of the rose branches again.

Unfortunately one of the Baron Prevost rose branches snapped in half so rather than leaving the flowers out there to die I cut the branch off and then carefully cut some roses to bring indoors. Baron Prevost has a combination of large thorns and tiny thin prickly thorns covering it’s branches so it took some time to cut the roses off the branch and get them ready to go into a vase!

I almost never cut any of my flowers to bring inside. I prefer to enjoy them outside. Or I used to prefer them that way … after bringing in the very perfumey Baron Prevost flowers (and three peonies) I think I might change my mind.

I put the roses, two peony Peacher Peonies and one Karl Rosenfield peony in a vase in my kitchen and within minutes the whole main floor of our house was filled with a mix of rose perfume and delicate peony scent. In fact our house smelled of rose and peonies for two days before the roses started to wilt. Even then, the wilting roses still had some scent, although it was much milder than it had been when I first brought them indoors.

Do you ever bring some of your garden flowers indoors? Which ones are your favorites to bring inside?

White orchids and orchid babies

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I have three Orchids. Two are the more common variety and one is a little different – but I can’t remember what it’s called! The one that is slightly less common produces white flowers that look like this:

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This is actually my oldest Orchid. It hasn’t bloomed for a while – like maybe three years. It was too busy producing baby plants!

Orchid air roots and baby

It has two or three baby Orchid plants growing on it. All are high above the main plant and have well developed air roots.

I’ll cut them off in the near future and plant them and hope that they continue to grow. Odd looking air roots though aren’t they?

The second white Orchid is brand new. I just bought it in early January and it was in bloom when I bought it and it’s STILL blooming! That’s almost two months worth of blooms!

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I’m so happy that so many of my “indoor” plants are blooming this year. We’ve had flowers all year round between the plants in the garden and my seemingly every blooming indoor plants. It certainly helps keep the winter blues at bay!

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