Last Saturday I was swept away by the profusion of peonies on display at Pike Place Market!

These pink ones with the broken darker pink color are really extraordinary!  I am very taken with the broken patterns in flowers (see my earlier posts on broken colors in tulips and koi fish).

These tight, white buds promise a glorious floral moment coming soon.

Every variety of pink was to be found in these over-the-top flowers.

Pink moving to mauve, to lavender.

Gorgeous, blowsy peonies!  I love them!  I saw my first peony when I was in high school, visiting a relative in Montana.  In his overgrown and neglected garden were these large bushy plants with shiny green foliage.  And there were the blossoms of all shades of pink.  And a crazy big fragrance, not always wonderful; in fact, the scent sometimes resembled ammonia!  But the big bold blossoms were simply irresistible to me on that warm spring morning 40 years ago.  And I have loved them ever since.  They were the first perennial I planted in my Denver garden 18 years ago.

Enjoy the shots of this favorite spring-time bloom, for, like life, it has a definite peak season.  They can sometimes be forced to bloom under certain man-made conditions, but forced blooms are never as wonderful as the real thing.