The last peonies. No more until next summer. Cue moody photograph of hewn and strewn blossoms.
We've hit temperatures over 90, so peonies are long gone! I saved the spent blossoms for my worm-composting event last Saturday at the Walker. The compost worms eat mostly food scraps from my kitchen, but that seemed like a messy option for the 375 small children who came by my table. So I gave them the least offensive meal possible: cut up carrots and snap peas, flower petals and leaves. I felt like a fancy, fussy chef. Only the finest organic ingredients, tastefully presented.
Along similar lines of tasty presentation, I've been trying to make new floral arrangements with the less showy plants in the vegetable garden. This one is calendula and other cool-weather edibles, in honor of the newly hot summer: bolted arugula, spinach, and cilantro. ("Bolting" is the fancy gardener term for a plant that's gotten its cue from the season to start producing flowers/seeds.)
So summer is happening rapidly. I'm trying to stop thinking about all the things I haven't done, focus on the things I want to do right this instant. Which, I know, is just a way of reframing the same list. Sigh.
Meanwhile, some of us are more successfully ignoring time's passage.