h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Peony fans can get quite interested in the different types. Peonies have been known to thrive for 100 years. If you're making that much of a time commitment, you might as well know what kind you've got .

The red peony at the top of our entrance ramp was planted in 2016. It was on sale, which meant it had already bloomed for the year. The foliage died back, so I assumed the plant had died. Imagine my surprise the next Spring, when it came back up and bloomed. This Spring I bought another peony -- a Sarah Bernhardt.
http://www.gardenia.net/plant/paeonia-lactiflora-sarah-bernhardt-peony

A third variety, which is usually too expensive for me to buy, is the yellow peony, a hybrid that crosses the regular peony with the tree peony. It's on sale now at Breck's, though. Not sure whether I would have space for it. Those tree genes make it five feet wide eventually.
http://www.brecks.com/product/bartzella-itoh-peony

(I love peonies. Thank you for photographing yours.)

You are right, it looks like that. All my peonies are pink, I got most of them from my mum because they spread too much in her garden. I only bought one pink-white one myself.

I also love peonies, not only the look but also the smell.

Tav, do Austrian ants help the blossoms open? Here in the US ants help by licking the tightly balled blossoms.

To be honest I've never heard about that and also didn't see many ants on the blossoms. I really don't know.

This year has had a lot of cloudy days and rather a lot of rain. We have very tall plants, but only one peony blossom. The deal with cloudy, moist conditions is that you may have to stake some of your lilies (I didn't until it was too late ).

Here it was hot and dry most of the time, with a few heavy rainfalls. The lilies in my back garden are just opening their blossoms, they stand a bit in the shade of the trees. he ones in the front garden were rather small this year because I guess I didn't water them enough.
Also we try to get the grass to grow around the extension of the house, where the catarpillar dug things up a few months ago, but we had so much sunshine that it didn't grow in most places.

What kind of butterfly did the caterpillar turn into?

Sorry, I got distracted while writing. It was an excavator that dug up our garden.

I'm afraid that I have been known to distract people as well.