I used colored pencil here and I’m rather pleased with it.

This is an intersectional peony, her name is Hillary. I love the different names for flowers.  There are simple, reliable names, like Hillary, probably named for someone’s daughter or mother. But more often new flowers are given absurd, silly names: names like Blue umbrellas, Tiny monster or Tomato soup.  I imagine it’s somebody’s idea of a joke, an excuse to say things like “My Black Negligee strangled out the Eskimo Pie; maybe I’ll get a Pink Teacup to replace it.”

I may have to start buying plants based on their silly names and write bad soap opera poems like this one:

Regal Bartzella, golden tresses and perfume,

a delight to her admirers.

Always sheltered from

scorn, pruning and midday sun.

A beauty like hers could only be

maintained by weekly fertilization.

Tragedy struck.

Found one Sunday morning,

violated, bare and clinging to

the scraps of her former self.

Her twin remained unharmed.

Squirrel is sought for questioning.