Memorial...

In Their Prime   oil/canvas   16 x 20

My grandma Daisy didn't have much as far as material wealth, but she had a most amazing flower garden, the pride of which were the peonies.  When I visited as a young adult, I would always return home with a bunch of the fragrant lovelies, carried in coffee cans until they could be put into a vase.  My own patio is edged with a peony row that were started from hers and each year, we comment on the timing of the blooming as it relates to the holiday.  My mother, now 84, still visits each family grave site during the weekend.  She brings her clippers and lovingly clips the grass around each one, sweeps it clean with a brush and fills the urns with these peonies which she, too, carries in a coffee can.  Time to remember.  Time to breathe in the beauty.

This year the peonies were early.