My first herbaceous this season is cherry ruffles





Alexander Woollcott getting ready to open

Beautiful, Gary!

So envious of your springs, everyone! It's snowing again here today and not expected to get back in the 60s until the weekend. Enjoying your peony pics, though—distracting me from the whiteout through the windows!

LizinElizabeth said:So envious of your springs, everyone! It's snowing again here today and not expected to get back in the 60s until the weekend.

When is peony season there? I am pretty sure that the second or third week of May is when I'll start seeing blooms, though I suspect that my garage-based plants will start quite a bit sooner.

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Alexander Woollcott





Cherry Ruffles





Lemon Chiffon is getting ready to open



I love this time of year. Close to freezing tonight.

Beautiful, Gary! Thanks for posting.

Beautiful Gary! We are supposed to freeze tonight.... maybe down into the 20's 😫

I have covered as much as I could, but 2/3 of my peonies ( and all of my Hostas) remain uncovered.

I am so sorry to hear that you too will get temps in the 20's LG. I hope it will not be as bad as forecasted for you and Alex. Maybe it will be so brief that buds won't be affected.

Sure hope your freeze warning doesn't materialize, LG!!! How did your peonies fare? Did it get super cold?

This is a later start to the season than normal but I'm not going to complain. We normally have weeks of really nice weather in March and April so everything wakes up and starts growing, then a blizzard and super cold weather for a few weeks to completely decimate growth. This year we've had nice weather so far but only in small doses! I do have a few herbaceous, species and woody peonies showing signs of life outside but much less than normal for April. For example, I'm used to seeing fernleaf hybrids pop up first then notice Ostii foliage buds around the last week of March. This year I saw them last week, 2nd week of April. We normally get some of the very earliest blooms toward the end of May. We'll see how that works out this year.

Well it got down to 29 here. I just went out and checked on everything. I had uncovered around 9:30.

Some peonies that weren't covered look fine others have stems leaning over. Only time will tell.

The blooms I covered still looked good this afternoon. Here is Greenland. It was under the spun row cover.

Mieko2 said:
The blooms I covered still looked good this afternoon.

Yay! Glad to hear that things went well.

Let's hope the frost is not going to damage your plants, LG. Greenland looks good. We are to -4C tonight.

Yes, that's fantastic, LG! So glad to hear that your peonies buds and blooms were spared. BTW. Greenland is gorgeous! I think this cool front of weather makes peonies bloom to last much longer than normally would if temps are in the 80's. You will have a wonderful blooming season, LG!

Thanks all! Alex we all hope your garden escapes damage.

My true lilies were hit hard. Also the TB irises. Their stems are bent over with kinks, so they won't recover.

I moved/divided many of my peonies last autumn, so can't say this is their normal bloom time or best looking blossoms.

A la Mode


Seedling, possibly out of Ludovica



Seedling, possibly Magenta Gem X Blaze

Greg, those are beautiful!!

Beautiful, Greg! Seedlings are very nice!

Thanks LG and Karen!

Vanilla Schnapps is another early one.



I found a big bumblebee on my Rose Reverence bud.



Pink Hawaiian Coral only had one bud survive this Spring.




Prosperity Maude

I have a herbaceous peony coming up, it's a pink one, I didn't label it, but I have a list of what I bought. Light pink. It will be a good guessing game, could be Celebrity peony.