Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 583
Peonies
Hello Everyone
lt is about this time of year people start setting up their garden for the forthcoming growing season and are looking forward to sitting outside on warm, summer days.
One of the flowers to put on the most spectacular display of colour in the garden is the peony. They are the herald of summer.
They have been called the queen of flowers.
They have also been called the ball gowns of the garden – because they are big and flouncy and are only worn occasionally for a short time!
But although the flowers are mostly short-lived at the beginning of the summer, they may only bloom for a week or so, the lush foliage of the plant goes on for the whole summer.
The plants come originally from China where they are a national emblem.
The plants are used in traditional, Oriental medicine and the petals have been used in drinks and salads.
(Don’t eat flowers from the garden, they are not all edible.)
Peonies have been cultivated for around 4,000 years, and in this country they were bred into new species in the 1800s.
They are named after Paean who was, in mythology, the physician to the Greek gods.
According to ancient legend he cured Pluto after he was wounded in battle by using a peony. Pluto was the ruler of the Underworld – the place where the Ancient Greeks thought people went after death.
There are three types of peony: herbaceous, tree and intersectional.
The herbaceous peony is the best known; it has spectacular flowers and is divided into two types.
The hybrids are crosses of wild peony. The lactiflora are many different types of cultivars – that means they were bred into existence by people.
The tree peonies are actually woody shrubs which grow between one to three and a half metres tall – that is eleven feet – depending on which type you plant. (Trees have one trunk and shrubs are multi-stemmed.)
The large flowers bloom early in the growing season, the leaves turn to lovely colours in the autumn and the stems add structure to the garden through the winter. They are deer and disease resistant.
The third group of peonies called the intersectional make more compact plants than the first two types, but the flowers last over a month.
Peonies like free-draining, moist and rich soil so you can give them mulch to help settle them into your flower beds.
They quite like sun but can manage in partial shade.
They come in a large range of pink colours, white, peach, purple and even yellow and are easy for children to grow. Sometimes they have nice fragrance as well.
The lovely thing about them is that they come up year after year because they are hardy and can make it through cold winters. This is called being perennial. Some plants have been known to last over 100 years.
You can make new plants by division – if you can get a grown-up to dig them up for you and pull the thick storage roots apart. Don’t plant them too deeply.
They have been very popular with brides in recent times – and bees love them.
A lot of people think peonies are very special flowers.
Bye bye everyone – don’t forget to subscribe to my blog!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bob: So what is your joke for this week Bill?
Bill: A policeman stops a man driving a car and says, “Can you give me your name please?”
And the man says, “Well, what am l supposed to use then!”
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Tree peony
The ‘ball gowns’ of the flower world
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
This week, Bill and Bob stayed at Auntie Alice’s cottage overnight because their parents had to go away for one night.
Then Emily and Henry wanted to stay over as well.
They all planned to have a midnight feast.
But Auntie Alice had other ideas.
She said that with all the creaking floorboards in her cottage, even little feet can be heard moving around upstairs!
She told them that children should go to bed early – even when they weren’t at home.
She told them that scientists have been studying sleep and have come up with some very interesting conclusions.
They found that you sleep better when you exercise during the day.
You sleep better in a well-aired room.
Scientists have found that there is a gland in the brain called the pineal gland that becomes active during sleep.
The pineal gland in your brain releases different chemicals at different times during the night.
The earlier you go to bed, the more you can fall into a deep sleep when you go to sleep and this is very healthy for you.
If you go to bed early, you will learn better and remember more.
You will be in a better mood.
You will age better.
There is a lot of cleaning that goes on in the brain, including of negative emotions, when you go to bed early, because the chemical cleaning system works mostly at the beginning of the night, and then the dreaming takes place mostly in the last part of the night.
So the children had to have an early bedtime.
I mean, you can’t argue with all of that, can you?
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Quick Quiz
Do you know what these words mean?
- erroneous
- erratic
- expenditure
- egotistical
- elementary
- encounter
- exoskeleton
- eradicate
- engrossed
- eclectic
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A PlN CUSHlON lN A CUP
Here is another idea to use a teacup for a project.
Take a circle of fabric 25cm across.
Hem the edge to make it neat.
Put a running stitch along the edge.
Pull the circle into a bag and stuff it.
Pull the running stitch tight to seal the bag.
Stuff the bag into the cup with the middle of the circle at the top.
The cushion will sit proud of the cup and make plenty of space to hold your pins while you are working. You can move the pin cushion from place to place by holding the handle and keeping your hands well away from the pins.
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
- erroneous – mistaken
- erratic – irregular
- expenditure – money spent
- egotistical – to describe a big-headed person
- elementary – basic/beginning
- encounter – meeting
- exoskeleton – skeleton on the outside like on an insect
- eradicate – get rid of completely
- engrossed – captured attention/absorbed in
- eclectic – a mixture of unrelated things
