What a celebratory weekend.  All due honor has been paid to our veterans, and even the tree peony has joined in those solemnities. Appropropriately, she is named (in translation) The Face of the Goddess of Compassion.  This year she has nine blossoms, each about 7 inches across.

Next  to Guan Yin is another tree peony, planted at the same time, about 5 or 6 years ago (the relevant journal has gone missing) but she is smaller and  will have only three blossoms this year. Fortunatley the ice  storm damaged a sheltering viburnam, but the tree peonies were spared.   I don’t know whether my other two tree peonies, one red and one white, which are more exposed will bloom this year.

The weekend has been beautiful and we’ve gotten a lot of work done, paving in front of the Welcome Platform (not quite finished) cleaning up the damaged apple tree next to the Cottage Ornee, planting new perennials from the Greenfield Garden Club sale, phlox and columbine, in addition ot moving a yarrow and astilbe from one bed to another, and weeding the Lawn Beds, but it was all done in  the midst of the fragrance of the hedge of common lilacs, some the tradition purple, and some this wonderful single white.

Even though we had that one ancient white lilac three years ago I bought the Beauty of Moscow, a double white that begins with fat pink buds.  I also have a Miss Willmott white that I planted last year, but it is too small to bloom. That was a gift from Jerry Sternstein, who dug up a shoot from his MW. He has 70 lilacs!

Of course, there was lots of work in the vegetable garden. I have 6 tomatoes, two each of Cherokee Purple, Paul Robeson and Volkov. I  also planted 2 Sweet 100s in the Herb Bed, along with a yellow pear tomato. Herb seedlings were planted too, parsley and basil. I stuck a few cosmos in the Herb Bed because I had extra seedlings. Pole beans and Raven zucchini went in.

Squash seedlings went in the ground. Sunshine and Waltham Butternut.  You can see the peas are doing fine.

The Cottage is Open! All swept out and set up for tea time. This is my reading corner, but no sitting and reading time this weekend. Soon.

When you enter the Cottage you can see this deep purple Ludwig Spaeth blooming in back of the Cottage. It gets a lot of shade and is a little more spindly than I  would like but I’m hoping time will take care of that. The fragrance wafts into the Cottage.

From the north windows you can see Boule de Neige and Rangoon, white and red rhodies, along with some ajuga that runs every where and a little primrose. My friend who gave it to me later said there wasn’t really room under the rhodies for primroses. She was right.

This was a weekend!  Out in the garden, and even a fabulous Gourmet Club dinner on Saturday. 28 years of serving ourselves – and we are still hungry.