Soup's on!

I've got a pot of chicken-vegetable soup on the stove, but I'm too hungry to wait for it to simmer long enough. I'll probably eat an orange or some peanuts to hold me until a decent dinner hour.

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I've got several peony plants with big buds; hope they open up nicely instead of shriveling, as some of them did last year. The hydrangea plants all survived the winter and are leafing out, the six I planted last year plus three or four old plants. I hardly expect the new ones to bloom, they're so small, but you never know until it happens or doesn't.