Peonies are gorgeous! Mums are chrysanthemums. The difference is that mums have shorter petals, which causes the flowers to look like pompoms. They bloom twice a year, spring and fall. They die back over winter, but are one of the first plants to revive in spring. I live in Zone 9. I have several planted in the yard.

Viega,
Glad to know someone is growing peonies in ABQ, I'm in Rio Rancho and I just bought a tree peony through Cricket Hill. I have it in a pot now and left it outside in a covered patio. It is bare root and does not have leaves.
Would you please tell me how I should take care of this baby in our dry climate? Do you keep your peonies in the ground year round, or do you overwinter them indoor? Will peonies grow in our hot Summer sun?

I believe you will find the term"mums" developed from slang (sorry, the cockney or London words) criz anti mum, and finally shortened to mums, incidentally the pom-poms are actually chrysanthemums, hope this will help. For those of you in dry areas the simple answer is lasagna gardening, an old method created by "mother nature" of layering different degradeable materials, such as manure, leaves, fruit, kitchen scraps etc which I go into on my pages of gardeningforyou.com I hope the pages are useful to you.

Here is a link that might be useful: www.gardeningforyou.com