A Poem and Backstory

From Lynda’s Journal

 

Amanda Planted Peonies 

(Boule de Neige)

 

Memories of Amanda

return when I am tending

my flower gardens.

 

Amanda planted peonies

during the Great Depression of 1929.

Nearly a century ago, she planted

besides her newly built home

on the ridge

near the old iron bridge.

 

Delicate rosy petals whisper

like a deep pink waterfall

translucent petals blooming

growing and glowing

with cerise centers

rounded like snowballs.

(Boule de Neige)

 

I visualize Amanda’s hands

pulling weeds and raking the soil

as she nourishes her perennial plot

that I inherited

when I purchased her house

over a half-a-century later.

 

I celebrate Amanda’s

Victorian heirloom plants

And witness the process of rebirth

Along my sidewalk each year.

 

Vintage Peonies are aromatic,

sweet-scented – refreshed with morning dew.

They persist over time like

old and precious friendships,

renewing each year.

 

Amanda’s prolific flowers

continue to multiply

in my early summer garden.

 

Old fashioned peonies are reminders

of calm days in the garden

where we find a relaxed pace in life.

 

Lynda McKinney Lambert, Ellwood City, PA

riverwoman@zoominternet.net

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*Published:

Amanda Planted Peonies

appears in the summer quarterly issue of The Avocet,

which can be downloaded here.

Charles Portolano, Editor

Contact:

#The Avocet

P.O. Box 19186

Fountain Hills, AZ 85269

 

Backstory:

Amanda Planted Peonies

  Amanda and John Duncan were excited in the early spring of 1929 as they hosted an open house party. The young couple owned a little gas station and grocery store next door to the new home. This was a dream come true for the couple. One feature in the house was “Eddie’s Toy Room,” for a little boy they were adopting.   

I sat with Amanda one afternoon in 1967 as she told me all about how they built the house and the events that changed all of their plans in 1929.

Bob and I were looking for a new home. Our two little daughters were with us one day when we were out for a ride in the car. Bob saw a “For Sale” sign in the front yard at 104 River Road, in the little Village of Wurtemburg, in western Pennsylvania. This looked like the perfect house for our little family. It was love at first sight as we looked at the graceful old home with an apple tree beside the little gravel driveway. The house was built near a winding creek and woods.

After some weeks of negotiations and paperwork, the home was ours.  

After moving into the house, we met our neighbors, John and Amanda Duncan. They lived next door, and eventually, we heard the story of how they had the house built. Unfortunately, the depression hit about the same time they moved into their new home. As the economy plunged downward, they decided that they would move back down to their old house and run a gas station and grocery store so that they could survive. So they sold the home at 104 River Road.  

One day as I was talking to Amanda, she told me how she had planted the row of peony bushes beside the driveway. She said she grew them when the house was built. Over the years since we have lived in this house when the peonies are blooming every year, I think about Amanda and the joy she had in planting those peonies. I replanted them to a place where they greet every visitor who arrives at the house. Anyone driving past the house can see them along the fence line. Each year, those remarkable vintage peonies make everyone smile. I always think that Amanda’s peonies are her gift to people from all past and present generations and into the distant future. 

Amanda’s peonies begin to bloom near the end of May and into the first week of June. These abundant bushes are thriving and fruitful. I have a freshly picked bouquet of pink peonies in a porcelain pitcher on my kitchen counter. Each time I look at them, I whisper a “thank you,” to Amanda for the gift she has given me all these years.  

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©Lynda McKinney Lambert, 2022. All rights reserved.

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