Perhaps no flower is more flagrantly floral than the peony.  This cabbage like variation on a rose makes the most of sandy soil and allows ants to eat away its husk to release its ample petals.  All it took was two dry days for beds just clear of tulips and daffodils to bloom again, this time with a lasting scent and with no end to the show in sight.  These flamboyants that run the gauntlet of pinks and reds pick themselves out of uncoiling covers of ferns and fiddleheads and easily overpower wild garlic and  the cheaper perfume of honeysuckle.  You'd be forgiven if you thought they were carnations.  Such is the abundance of the garden of Summer's eve that it almost makes sense to say prodigal, only slightly less flattering than profligate in the scale of nature running riot, far, far beyond the standards of lushness and bountiful--an embarrassment of riches for the northern woodland born.