Mrs. Teabody Dreams of Peonies

"You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child."

Today is a very special day!

Good Morning, Gentle Reader! What a glorious cloud-free sunrise Friday brings! Whatever your plans may be, the enjoyment of an hour's reading today should find its way to your list, do you not agree? TYF always has a host of reading materials at hand with good reason. The right words at a bad time can mean all the difference to one's state of mind. Wherever you take inspiration, make a point of getting reacquainted with a favorite book, author, poet, or essayist.

Mrs. Teabody takes great delight in gardening, and has a particular fondness for roses. Rose lovers know that for English roses especially, there comes a spring week when the "flush" means the most bountiful crop of blooms of the entire growing season. Last year it came just as the peonies had reached full flower, and what a sight it was! Mr. Teabody had constructed a support to hold up the peonies' heavy heads and it worked a treat not to have them languishing in the mire. Each rose has its own unique scent, and mingled together these scents can almost make one  laugh with delight.

However, not one of these ethereal scents is quite as intoxicating as a nose full of peony fragrance.  Mrs. Teabody is never timid when it comes to smelling flowers. If she could, she would take the scent straight into her memory and keep it there every second of the day.

The impossibility of doing so is perhaps the reason that the fragrance of the peony holds such power. Nothing says the imminent advent of summer like the fragrance of a peony. Nothing suggests the delights of a bygone era as does the fragrance of a peony. The scent conjures images of white dresses,  icy beverages in beautiful glasses,  gentle breezes  shaking willow branches with no threat of chill.

Yet the life of the peony is so very short. As Robert Frost writes:

Nature's first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf's a flower; 

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf. 

So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day. 

Nothing gold can stay.

"Nothing gold can stay."  Is it not important to take  in every last drop  of every single moment, Gentle Reader? Be alive to the world around you. Allow your mind to dream of peonies but do not let that dream give short shrift to the hyacinth pushing its nose through the ground, the pussywillows just now breaking out of their winter shells, or that son, daughter, niece, nephew, grandchild waiting for the chance to read to you. To read with you. Have a memorable Friday!