My favorite flowers are peonies. I just love everything about them. The color the smell, how romantic they are without even trying. Seriously peonies are beautiful flowers, but they are hard to come by especially in the "off season" I always thought these flowers would be so hard to grow and I thought for sure they needed to be in a warm climate. Then I was digging around (pun intended) and found out that peonies actually do really well in Minnesota. I couldn't believe it! I rushed to my local nursery to grab a plant. I only grabbed one because I do don't have a green thumb and I was a little prepared to accept the fact that the plant might not return next year.

That one plant that had 4 flowers on it turned into 8 flowers the next year! And this year as my plant begins to bloom again has approximately 18 buds! (edited to add that a deer came along and took a munch out of two of the stems consuming 4 buds and possibly ruining a couple others. it then proceeded to spit it out in the grass because apparently deer do not like peonies! I wish it would have known that sooner)

In any event, for my birthday in April my family bought me a bouquet of peonies. I was actually surprised they were able to find some, since they don't usually bloom until summer. So of course I took out the film camera and took some pictures of them. That's the other reason I love peonies so much, they are so photogenic! So while I wait for this year's plant to bloom I'm going to share with you some images taken on Kodak Gold film; scanned at my favorite film lab: THE FIND LAB