peony obsession

I've been obsessing over flowers recently.  Peonies to be exact.  I love having fresh flowers around but there are a few things that usually stop that from happening:  money and allergies.  Obviously, fresh flowers are expensive so they generally don't appear unless Joel surprises me with them.  But Joel is the one with the allergies.  Bad ones.  Face exploding bad.

On my birthday, my dad sent me a gorgeous arrangement of pink everything.  Roses, lilies, gerbera dasies, carnations, it was gorgeous!



Unfortunately it was stinkin' hot in the house (we were avoiding the a/c as long as possible) and so they didn't last as long as they should of had I managed to move them downstairs to the cool basement.

Before that I had some fresh lilacs cut form the front garden (sorry no pics).  And so now I am hooked.

When we moved into this house I was pleasantly surprised to find that someone had planted an amazing garden in the back.  There are chives, blue fescue, day lillies and best of all - Peonies!  With very little help from me, and lots of help from my mom (who just finished a great week long visit) the garden is looking great.  But, the peony bush is huge and definitely needs to be staked.  Since I'm not planning on staking it, I am cutting the blossoms when they get too big and start to touch the ground.



So now I feel like Martha Stewart with pretty vases of peonies around the house.  This one lives on the dining room table.



And this one was living on the coffee table in the living room:



But then we had friends over last night and Bre loved them so they went home with her.  There are plenty more where those came from, so I'll have to find more loving homes.

Of course, one downfall to growing peonies is all the damn ants!  We already have an ant problem and I'm pretty sure the peonies are making it worse, but they are so pretty.  Since I cut the blossoms in the rain, I thought I would avoid the all the ants in them, but after arranging them I found (no kidding) almost 30 freakin' ants all over my house!  We are past that point now, but man that was a pain.

All this to say, I'm feeling a little more inspired recently.  We had almost a full month of visitors at the house and I was feeling a bit run off my feet.  Not much was happening in the creative department (aside from my mom's visit which I will get to in another post) but now it's getting better again.  I've got a little something in the works for a mini quilt swap that I'm excited about and then maybe some selfish sewing.