Mayflower53:

Since you haven't provided sufficient information, I'll do my best to resolve your situation.

1. If the peonies are still in the ground, I would not dig them up at this time of year; I'd leave them in the ground until it has been sufficiently cold to kill the leaves.

2. If, however, the peonies are bare roots, you will need to ship them to their destination as soon as possible.

3. You should obtain some Sphagnum Moss, which is the non shreaded or ground up Peat Moss or, if that's not available, you could make use of sawdust - preferably course material

4. If you locate some Sphagnum Moss - put a bunch of it in a large pot and fill the pot with warm water - the warm water will absorb into the moss a little faster. Once this stuff is thoroughly soaked, put it in a colander and let is drain.

5. If you use sawdust, put the sawdust in a similar pot, let it absorb the moisture and then use a fine strainer to drain much of the moisture out of the sawdust.

6. In either case, the moisture content of either the moss or the sawdust, should be close to the moisture of a slightly rung out wash cloth use in taking a bath or doing the dishes.

7. Lay down several layers of a newspaper, put a sufficient amount of either the moist sawdust or moss on the paper, place one peony root on top, put some additional sawdust or moss on top of the root and then wrap up the root in the newspaper.

8. Continue the process until all of the roots are wrapped up.

9. If you you don't wish to make use of several layers of newspaper, you could also make use of a 1 gallon zipper plastic bag and nestle each root in some moist sawdust or moss.

10. Place the contained roots in a box; pkg them well and use a shipping method that will insure that the roots will arrive within 3 to 5 days - the sooner the better, especially at this time of year, when Mother Nature begins to turn up the temperatures - in our neck of the woods.

FYI - we are still in the cool 70's.

Hopefully, the recipient of your roots will plant them in the garden shortly after their arrival and water them well.

Hope this is useful.

Bill