Poppies...

It was one of the best,most striking book jackets I have ever seen...do you remember it, Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh and I really enjoyed the book too...


And all I have wanted, and it doesn't seem too much to ask, is a sea of poppies in our garden.

'Oh they are really easy,' everyone says.

The last person to say this to me was standing with nonchalance next to the biggest, most massive, most beautiful crop of bright red annual poppies that I had ever seen (not even yours Fran H-B...way bigger) and really I have to confess to a bout of the greenest envy.

'I just ignore them and they come up every year...never water them, never go near them...'

Don't ask me how many poppy seeds I have sown in this garden, year after year and not a sausage. Year after year Fran H-B sends me yet more seeds from hers and maybe one or two appear but that's it.

Last year a few of these appeared, Papaver rhoeas (I think) hardly a sea and then only because, seeing nothing yet again, I found two tiny seeds left in the envelope and nurtured them in a pot before planting them out. Completely against the rules of benign neglect where annual poppies are concerned I am sure.. far too much care and attention.

...and then there was the odd one up in our little orchard...

and then in late July just the one of these Papaver somniferum, an opium poppy of unknown variety appeared from thousands of seeds sent by Sabina who reads here sometimes I think...

I was that overjoyed you'd have thought I had won the football pools.

But the opium poppies also scared me ever so slightly.

Papaveretum also known by its drug trade name Omnopon and doubtless etched on every student nurse's brain from doing the controlled drugs checks. The weekly ritual, every last ampoule had to be accounted for, counted and double checked by two people, put back in the box and then locked away again, the drugs book signed and dated. The keys to the drugs cupboard held by the most senior nurse on duty, and at Great Ormond Street kept in place in your pocket or behind the bib of your apron with that securest of things, a nappy pin. When it was finally my turn to be that nurse it felt like a massive responsibility. 

Checking the poppy heads one day last last summer, just out of interest to see if they were actually going to seed, and out oozed the white liquid. Is it the same stuff... I almost wanted Sister to come and stand next to me and check it, surely this couldn't be legal. It was a strange portent because nor was I to know that within months we were going to have enough opiates in the house to flatten an army, and no one seemed in the least bit bothered about where we kept them or what we did with them. I was doubly terrified, hated giving them and was very relieved to ship the stash back to the pharmacy eventually.

As the poppies went to seed last summer (and I now know you obviously wait for the seed head to rattle) I just scattered them around in the vain hope they might winter over and reappear this year. I collected more seeds for this spring, found them again by chance and then decided to play it very cool.

I'd take the devil-may-care approach...

In fact I really couldn't care less about them...

Not in the least bit bothered if they didn't come up...

Who wants poppies anyway...

I flung the seeds around and then genuinely forgot about them.

And now look...

These a fraction of the poppies on a long strip of soil beneath a hedge favoured by weeds and little else no matter how hard we tried.

It might not be quite a sea, more a river, but suddenly they are poppying up (sorry, had to) all over the place.

Expect more poppy adulation later in the summer.

And now you are all going to tell me how easily they grow in your garden too...