"This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart, as the sun rises,"

I am in love with peonies.  I have always loved these flowers, but my love has become a bit mad recently.... fiscal responsibility has been cast aside and peonies are blooming throughout our little house.  

As a child in my great auntie's garden, I remember being drawn to the flowers' fragrance, and repulsed by the ants crawling, scurrying all over them.  Recently, both the peonies and ants are perhaps one of the most lovely things in my life...(though, as I have no garden, it is really the thought of the ants drinking sweet sap and dancing all over the peonies....)  

I found a poem by Mary Oliver (surprise...I've been on a kick.)  Here is a bit below:  

Peonies

 "....the flowers bend their bright bodies, 

and tip their fragrance to the air, 

and rise, 

their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness, 

gladly and lightly, 

and there it is again-

beauty the brave, the exemplary, 

blazing open.  

Do you love this world? 

Do you cherish your humble and silky life? 

Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? 

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, 

and softly, 

and exclaiming of their dearness, 

fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, 

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, 

their eagerness

to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are 

nothing, forever?" 

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems