Fierce Patience

The fragile peony ...

When we bought our home almost 10 years ago, in October 2002, the garden was pretty bare.  Patchy grass and a Norway maple out front;  a silver maple, some kind of privet, a pink rosebush, a sedum that our aged neighbour called a "refrigerator plant," and a pair of perfectly straight border beds in the back.

Needless to say, we were giddy with anticipation and once Spring came, spent a couple of pleasant afternoons in the barren backyard with our landscape architect friend Ann, who dispensed great advice in exchange for a couple of great meals (if I do say so myself).

Ann, this time helping us plot a route home from Vermont rather than a garden.

Ann helped us figure out what might grow, what would grow, and what would grow so much that we might regret it. It's worked out pretty well. I mentioned that I would really like a peony and Ann, poking around, said that it might be a struggle but if we didn't mind losing the small investment, we could give it a whirl.

So we bought one and planted it somewhere I can't even remember. It did its little first year thing (i.e. nothing) and by the next year we had revised our garden architecture and moved the peony elsewhere. And yes, we know that peonies don't like to be moved (so they say).

For the next four years, this poor plant, situated as it was next to the lamp post in the front yard, never had a chance. It would sprout little leaves, we would get hopeful,  and then WHOOSH! it would be cut to the ground by an errant weed whacker. Oops.

One year we decided to build a raised bed in the shade of our Norway maple -- the only way to get anything other than crabgrass to grow. Kelly laid out the sides in an eccentric triangular shape in early Spring, and we began to populate it with little seedlings. Low and behold, the peony appeared. Safe from the weed whacker, it sent out some leaves and little else for a couple of years.

The triangle garden in its second spring.

Two years ago, we doubled the size of the raised bed and the Norway maple was finally condemned and felled by the City.  Lots of dirt was shifted in the redesign and .. you guessed it ... the peony ended up on the opposite side of the bed. We laughed indulgently at it. If it had been a witty child, we would have patted its head and gone back to whatever we were discussing over cocktails.

End of the square garden's first season.

 

Start of the square garden's third season.

Which brings us to the present. Spring, 2012. Walking around the front yard one morning, we noticed fat pink and green globes atop our witty peony child.

What the heck??

 



Very fat pink and green globes, glistening with the morning's rain.

A few days later, some sun and warmth, a little more rain (it had been a dry Spring):
 














And then, after a whole week of rain, boom!

Pure peony lusciousness

I watched this all unfold with a kind of disbelief and wonder.  A garden situation that didn't show the promise of hospitality to the peony. A plant that doesn't like to move being uprooted and moved ... not once, but three times. And let's not mention the indignity of the weed whacker, something no flowering shrub should endure.

This plant was, to say the least, persistent.  I thought of a litany that I use frequently in my work: Keri Wehlander's  "Fierce Patience" from her book Joy Is Our Banquet. It's a powerful reminder that the work of social change is not easy or swift. Neither, it turns out, is the work of nature.   

Like seeds germinating in the soil, she writes, persistence brings forth transformation. ... Like a bird with the first twig for a nest, persistence brings forth transformation.

Here's to our persistent peony, fluffy and frilly and made of steel. And here's to the garden that Sara and Kelly, fiercely patient gardeners, built around it.

With a little help from our friend, of course.  Cheers!