I anticipate with excitement a certain day of the year, every year. I can’t tell you what day it is, though, because I don’t actually know. To be more specific, I don’t ever know the exact date until the day it happens but the event that I anticipate, that I can tell you, I love the day my peony opens! Or peony, depending on how you pronounce it.
That day also happens to be a day I dread, because it rains that day and beats down my beautiful peony blooms, light pink, double blooms as big as my hand on tiny little stalks. It rains that day. Every. Year.
This year the gloriously painful day was June 15th. I know the exact date because I took pictures of the bloom. It was sunny in the morning when I awoke to several massive blooms that had popped open overnight – but by 11:30 a.m. the sky had turned cloudy. I decided to take a picture so I could enjoy their beauty longer, knowing they would only survive a day or so.
As I squatted in the dirt so my camera was even with a bloom, thunder clapped somewhere in the distance.
Seriously, I’m not making that up.