vases with faces and pine cones for hats
books strewn here and there about painted houses and childhood ramblings and motorcycle journeys in the sun
coffee brewing and candles burning and fox calls in the dead of night
It was named after Paeon, a physician to the gods, who obtained the plant on Mount Olympus from the mother of Apollo. Once planted the Peony likes to be left alone and punishes those who try to move it by not flowering again for several years. Once established, however, it produces spendid blooms each year for decades.
From Penhaligon’s Scented Treasury of Verse and Prose: The Language of Flowers, 1990