Poppies

-

A couple of years ago I read an amazing book called The Triumph of Seeds:How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History by Thor Hanson. He helped me to seed that the glory of a plant is not the beautiful flower that it produces, which fades in a short time and is gone. The real beauty and, in fact, the purpose of the plant is to produce seeds. 

 
About five years ago I bought some poppy seeds and planted some poppies. They are some of the first things to bloom in the garden. They just seed themselves and show up every year. The blooms are gorgeous.

  
However, the seed pods are also incredible.


 Eventually the pods dry out and become little pepper shakers full of poppy seeds. I picked one today and shook all the seeds out. Robert took photos of the seeds with his macro lens. Aren't they wonderful?

 
 
 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

East of Eden

-
Image
  We have been struggling with what to do after the fall of the garden and before the fall of the season. As you know we unintentionally poisoned our big garden out front this spring. That was devastating. This summer we have endured record-breaking heat and drought. Nothing is growing well, except the trees, and even they are looking a bit droopy.  We are re-thinking what it means to have a garden in this kind of climate. We've come up with some ideas, but it's too hot to implement many of them yet. We don't know how long the garden that we poisoned with manure compost that had residual herbicide in it will be unhealthy for plants. Grasses won't be bothered by the herbicide. So we are planning to convert that garden, the one in front of the Bee and the Clover into a grass and native plant demonstration garden. We plan to irrigate it so that folks will be able to see what the grasses look like when they have enough moisture. We hope that we will also be able to harvest
Read more

Mrs. Goodkind's Advice

-
Image
I have a sad story to tell about Lil’s Garden. After a disastrous year of gardening last year, we were determined to make every effort towards a successful garden this year. We drew a garden plan, reformed the raised beds, made a special trip to David’s Seeds to purchase seeds, grew 80 tomato plants and other things from seeds, and set up trellises for the tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers.  To enhance our soil, we got three truckloads of manure compost from a neighbor who was mucking out her barn after 10 years. We worked the compost into the beds with the tiller. We planted the plants and sowed the seeds and waited. Many of the seeds didn’t germinate.  The potatoes were very slow to come up, and when they did the leaves were cupped and curly. They just didn’t look right. I got on the internet to diagnose the problem. It appeared that the manure compost may have contained herbicide. I contacted our rancher friend and asked if they had sprayed herbicide on their pastures. She said she tho
Read more

Shades of Green

-
Image
We did complete the construction of our new garden. We made six raised beds and filled them up with winter greens. We are in the process of adding more gardens around the fence to grow tomatoes. Here are the many shades of green that we are enjoying,   Shallots, onions, sugar snap peas, and mustard greens   Spring onions, sweet peas, and mustard green Turnips, cilantro, spinach, parsley, bib lettuce, and dill Broccoli, Brussell sprouts, Swiss chard, mesculin mix, and carrots Kale, red and green cabbage, beets, and romaine lettuce Poppies, spinach, Crawford lettuce, and radishes Romaine lettuce Cilantro Dill Spinach Bibb lettuce Romaine lettuce Sugar snap peas Mustard greens Second growth of broccoli Red cabbage Beets Green cabbage  
Read more