The Peonies!

It has finally happened.  I've been checking the peony bush every day for the past two weeks, waiting for the blossoms to open.  The past couple of days there were some that looked soooo close to opening, but they were being stubborn.  Then finally today I went out to look again, and the first ones were open!

Goodness, I wish I had a whole garden full of them.

I couldn't resist cutting the first open bloom to bring inside and enjoy, even though that means the two buds on either side of it won't open.

Besides the peonies, the excitement around here this week is trees.  We have rows of evergreen trees on three sides of our yard, but the trees have been there for quite a while and some are dying.  Because they provide us protection from the wind, we don't want to wait until they completely die to pull them all out and plant new ones.  The new ones are little bitty and won't give much protection for a few years until they grow, so The Farmer ordered a bunch of new trees to plant.  Hopefully these will grow quickly and be ready to take over the wind-blocking duties when the existing trees have to be removed someday.

With our purchase of the evergreen trees, we were given some free oak trees as well.  We decided to plant a few in a line next to our driveway.  I've always liked the look of a tree-lined driveway.  There are already evergreens on the south side of the driveway, so we planted the free oak trees on the north side.  They don't look like much right now!

Those little sticks poking out of the ground are the trees.  Haha!  It's going to be a few years before they are very big.

Don't they look pathetic?!  Some of them don't have any leaves on them at all, and the ones that do have leaves look really withered and sick.  I'm not sure if that's what they're supposed to look like when they're this small, or if they're all going to die, but at least they were free.  If they all die, we're not out any money.  And if they live, I will get my tree-lined driveway in about two million years when they get big enough!  Haha!

The other excitement around here lately has been rain.  I don't think I ever considered rain to be exciting before I married The Farmer, but I guess things have changed.  We had a very dry winter and early spring, and the crops were really needing water.  The past two weekends we have finally had rain, and lots of it!  Last weekend I happened to catch this rainbow just after a shower drenched us.  Of course my phone didn't do it justice, but it was one of the brightest rainbows I've ever seen.