Mother Would Be Proud

I sure don't remember this peony looking like this when I received the plant last year.  It most certainly does not look anything like the flowers on the plants I was given this year.  Where are the multitudes of ruffled petals?  I'm just so glad it came up again and bloomed, single or double.  If the deer had not eaten the one bud off the other returning plant, it would have been interesting to see what that flower might have been.

I was channeling my mother yesterday as I worked in the lavender bed.  If I have one mental picture of her, it is of her bent at the waist, forearm resting on thigh, pulling weeds.  She was a weed-pulling fool.  I learned early on not to be embarrassed because she would pull weeds in the yards of strangers while we were on a walk, and weeds in the parking lot at the store.  See a weed, pull it.  It was as simple as that.  I don't know whether she'd be happy as a clam or a raving maniac at the sight of all the weeds here.  A nice breeze came up in the afternoon so Bessie and I went out to do a little yard work.  Turkeys walked past just a few feet away and a nosy squirrel whose burrow is under the burn pile came to the edge of the yard to see what we were up to.  It was as if the squirrel and I were on a teeter-totter.  I'd stand up, he'd squat down.  I'd bend over, he'd stand up.  (I'm easily amused.)  The line of demarcation is very clear; I stopped pulling weeds exactly where the shade ended.  I guess I'll have to go out early in the morning to get the section that is in the sun in the afternoon.  Even Mother would not be pulling weeds in that blazing heat.  Well....