Sacrifices must be made

The gardener who lived in this house before me liked to go to the garden center and buy lots and lots of plants and decorative doodads, which she arranged in ways she found attractive without regard to the plants’ growing preferences. But even this habit can’t really explain why I now have a peony inside a lilac bush under a magnolia tree.

The lilac hasn’t bloomed, but the peony bravely put out two blossoms this spring and they are a particularly nice deep purple and very fragrant. I considered the logistics of levering the peony out of there, but decided to just cut the lilac down to the ground and mulch over it, giving the peony more light and air. Sacrifices must be made.