What can I say? I like flowers with narcotic properties!

During a walk through one of his land scape masterpieces, Fred told me that the poppies in the garden we were walking through are the same thing some might use to make opium, and in fact the still green pods contained an unrefined narcotic sap. I though he was full of poo doo. How can it be legal to grow opium bushes in your front yard?

I ate a pod right then and there. Ha-ha Fred, yeah I'm gullible, but I'm not buying it, SEE?

I took a really long nap that afternoon.
ahem.

narcotic (drug), drug that produces analgesia (pain relief), narcosis (state of stupor or sleep), and addiction (physical dependence on the drug)

I stumbled upon a blog, leslieland.com before I had a chance to watch TV or read the news and get cranky. Thanks to this lovely webspace my mind has been swimming in foliage, fruit and blossom all day long!

Pictures of Leslie's squash made me cringe. It's not that I don't want my squash to succeed and be all that they can be,  I just think I underestimated them, which is never fun to admit to anyone. I have eight squash seedlings showing now, and about four by five feet of  the garden for them to frolic, and the pictures on the site show patches as large as my entire garden overflowing with only a few winter squash.

Maybe I shall have to add a bit of squash to my house borders this year? I quickly looked at other things...

Guess what I found??
POPPIES.

Oh the things that come to mind when laying eyes upon the Papaver Somniferum!

Elegant
Friendly
Mysterious
Opium, if you're so inclined,
and
...Promiscuous?

I learned that poppies are very promiscuous flowers and reproduce easily with other poppies, creating new traits and features, but ever the papaver.

Last autumn a new garden friend graced me with a bucket full of papaver pods upturned so as to save the seeds. I am so curious to find out whether they will germinate that I sprinkled some on a pot of damp soil mix in my vegetable sprouting space. I shall keep you updated.

If they sprout, they might not make it- I'm reading that they aren't wild about the process of transplanting.
What I need to do is bite the bullet and just start chucking them around. They'll take all the time they can get to germinate. A period of darkness is important to germinating poppy seeds, and cool weather gives them time to swell and develop slowly. This is how that tiny seed becomes that showy, tall, colorful performer! But to just go willy nilly, tossing my seedsies into the cold and wet?
Remember Ali- Seeds aren't people too.

The coolest part is that these seeds didn't come from a store. These poppies will be from the sister of a sister, friend to friend! As my own lovely sister would say, "EEEEE!"

When I spend all my time day dreaming about plants, I generally have one response to the "what's for dinner?" question, and it is "Pizza".
Pizza isn't going to cut it tonight, darling?
So, what do you do after racking your brain, taking your tummy into the hall and asking it in a non pressured sort of way what it wants, listening for an answer- listening?
You call your garden friend and ask her what she wants you to cook for her at your house!

Off I go to begin frying chicken, and warming "string beans".

Lesson- Mom's always right!
Look into the now, plant the seeds of encouragement in your mind for the future, and don't make negative assumptions about your life based on the ungerminated seedlings of your past.

Loving you all, from
Ali, Fred,
M.J., Maggie,
Dr. Bones, Tiberius, Gretchen and Trixy, even though she is under the bed, growling like mad at you for trying to give her some love back!