Peacock Maiden kicks off the daylily blooming season in our garden. The season seems to be delayed by the cool weather of the month of May. I would guess that our daylilies are at least a week, maybe 10 days, later than usual. It's the hangover from 2020 that we all are experiencing. And although yesterday was brilliantly sunny, the water temperature in our pool only reached 76 degrees. In years past I would have been swimming in the pool since early May. 

Our first daylily bloom was actually yesterday with Egyptian Queen, and there is another bloom this morning, but it doesn't fully open until later in the day. Peacock Maiden is an appropriate flower to begin the season as it was a Christmas plant exchange a few years ago from Brent Weedman. He was someone I wanted to know better because we shared so many interests: photography, daylilies, Louise Penny mysteries, and similar political views. But he lost his life to Covid this past winter. He is so missed by his wife, Jennifer, and family and countless friends, and by Judy and me. So we celebrate the beginning of the blooming season with Peacock Maiden.

My healing season will continue through the daylily season of the Hideaway with its peak in late June when the effects of my final chemotherapy treatment will subside and my strength will begin to return. And the blooming will continue through July. Hopefully, I will have managed to return to swimming in a warmer pool!