Mom's Peonies: 60 years old (at least) and going strong
I have written a column for the Monday Charleston Daily Mail about a peony that my mom planted nearly 60 years ago. Here's a picture of it taken earlier this week. It's healthier than ever.
She transplanted it from the place we lived in Guyandotte before we moved to where I live now. God knows how long it had been growing in Guyandotte. My grandmother may have planted it nearly a hundred years ago since my mom and dad lived in the house my grandma and grandpa lived in , probablyt since the 1890s.
I moved the peony once about 20 years ago - about 50 feet from where it used to grow.
By the way, I have a woody-stemmed hydrangea (snowball bush) my mom planted about the same time. It's showing its age, but it's still alive and I'm trying to nurse it back to health.
It's both exciting and conforting.
With apoligies to the writers of "Hair"
..and William Shakespeare
Ripped open by metal explosion
Caught in barbed wire
Fireball
Bullet shock
Bayonet
Electricity
Shrapnel
Throbbing meat
Electronic data processing
Black uniforms
Bare feet, carbines
Mail-order rifles
Shoot the muscles
256 IEDs captured
256 IEDs captured
Prisoners in Niggertown
It's a dirty little war
Three Five Zero Zero
Take weapons up and begin to kill
Watch the long long armies drifting home
....
What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason
How infinite in faculties
In form and moving
How express and admirable
In action how like an angel
In apprehension how like a god
The beauty of the world
The paragon of animals
I have of late
But wherefore I know not
Lost all my mirth
This goodly frame
The earth
Seems to me a sterile promontory
This most excellent canopy
The air-- look you!
This brave o'erhanging firmament
This majestical roof
Fretted with golden fire
Why it appears no other thing to me
Than a foul and pestilent congregation
Of vapors
What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason
I have written a column for the Monday Charleston Daily Mail about a peony that my mom planted nearly 60 years ago. Here's a picture of it taken earlier this week. It's healthier than ever.
