Peonies

I spent the larger part of May doing Peony "tours." Really it was a more like a 15 minute spiel on the history of how the peonies ended up in the park. It's a long story but they were transplanted from elsewhere in Gaithersburg but were once park of the "largest peony garden in the world." The varieties are pretty rare and spectacular, I'd never seen some like these in my life. It's a treasure to the area but modest in size now. It was a fun, but somewhat controversial topic, as peonies are not native and also we have some in the fields in a more natural state which people don't like as well as the fact of how the land they are on now and how it was acquired. Complex to say the least. I was mostly able to dodge any debates. And I met the remaining descendants of the man who started it all 100 years ago. Pretty cool and pretty :)