Every May, there’s a miracle happening in my garden—the peonies are blooming.
When I married my husband, peonies become a regular part of my spring. He had several healthy bushes that bloomed with abandon, filling the house with their heavenly smell, and delicate pale pink flowers.
Peonies are full of magic and wonder, a small miracle, easily missed.
In Kentucky, they only bloom in May. They have become a marker of Mother’s Day, and the passing of tumultuous spring into heated Kentucky summers. I looked forward to their short-lived magnificence with eager gratitude.
Five years ago, I left Lexington, the house my children were born in, and my peony bushes.
I don’t know why I didn’t dig them up and take them with me. Maybe I was afraid. Maybe the time of our move was so full of other changes, so full of doubt and loss and chaos that I forgot to think about them.
My first May in Louisville, I remembered them and missed them. It seems silly to miss something so simple, so non-essential.
What did it matter if May brought peonies or not?
But it did matter. It still matters.
Last fall, the rental house on the corner got a makeover.
I’d never thought much about that house, except for the fact that it had the most beautiful peony bushes in the neighborhood. I would walk by every day in May, on my way to Mass or to work, and I would be tempted to pick myself a bloom, to savor the small miracle unfolding right in front of me.
But I didn’t. They weren’t mine, and my mama raised me right.
Then the landlord decided to dig out the entire yard, replaced a pipe, removed his peony bushes, laid down fresh grass seed, and planted a small tree.
Their peonies were tossed into a pile of yard waste, waiting for trash day.
At first I was appalled. How could someone do that? Didn’t they know that those peonies could be saved and planted again? Didn’t the landlord know that they could keep on making a small bit of magic?
Apparently not.
And I’m glad, because they’re my peonies now.
I walked down the street in my fancy white work pants, gathered up as many healthy bulbs as I could, and dug a hole in my front yard. I cut back the foliage and watered them through the scorching heat of summer, September, and October (and a little bit of November).
I didn’t know if they would live, but I prayed and hoped and waited.
This May, magic is blooming in my front yard again.
The bushes are still small, since they were cut up and tossed aside, but they’re healthy. I won’t get many blooms this year, or next, but maybe in three or four years, they’ll be as happy and healthy as they were before.
I brought this year’s harvest of blooms into my office, my heart full of joy and a kind of sadness that I cannot explain.
People throw away small miracles all the time.
And they keep coming back, anyway. How does that happen?
My only answer is the Mercy of God. That mercy gives me a little magic every single May.
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