In the garden
Oct. 12th, 2008 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyWell, haven't I been Nature Girl in the garden this weekend? I got all excited on Saturday morning when I noticed that a couple of my poppies were blooming at last. My poppies, oh, what great plans I had for them. I put a couple of pots near the back door, filled with blue lobelias and red poppies and snapdragons for a quick hit of colour... and then watched as the lobelias and snapdragons flowered and nothing at all happened to the poppies. So much for that great idea.
Actually, that's the second time that idea hasn't worked. A few years ago, I bought some tulip bulbs to do a mass planting in one garden bed: a vista of red with two yellow tulips in the middle. It was going to look stunning... except all the red tulips flowered first, and after they had withered two lonely yellow ones popped up. Hmph.
Anyway, I've watched my poppies busy doing nothing these last few weeks, even as tiny wild poppies sprung up all over the lawn. (I love the flowers that just appear in spring; the park near my house is bright green right now, covered with a sweep of yellow butter daisies, little white daisies and tiny orange dots.) So yesterday, two of my poppies finally popped up, and this morning four more of them too; the lobelias and snapdragons are faded and straggly, but they're still there so my idea wasn't a complete loss.
All this talk of poppies reminds me of something that happened when I was little. My mother and grandmother rearranged our farmhouse garden completely, moving beds around and stirring up earth that hadn't been touched for years. They stirred up some long-dormant seeds in that earth too, and a few weeks later a couple of lovely, old-fashioned poppies grew: Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy. My grandmother, ever prone to overreaction, dug them out immediately, lest officers from the Drugs Squad raid and charge her with cultivating an illicit crop, despite my mother's more sensible protestations that two poppies do not constitute a crop. And so ended my grandmother's career as a drug baron(ess).
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a yellow capsicum for salads instead of my normal green one, and it was delicious. This afternoon, I went to see if I could buy a yellow capsicum plant for my vegetable garden, to recreate the magic for myself. Bunnings (a hardware/nursery chain) seemed to be having some sort of children's day: they had a bouncy castle, a fairy floss vendor and representatives from the scouts and guides and nippers (junior lifesavers). Oh, and a native wildlife display: a sleeping baby wombat, a sleepy baby koala, a couple of terrified quolls (busy hardware stores not being their natural habitat) and, er, a marmoset, which is not native to Australia as far as I know. So I looked at them, bought my capsicum plant and came home, which was all very jolly.
Actually, that's the second time that idea hasn't worked. A few years ago, I bought some tulip bulbs to do a mass planting in one garden bed: a vista of red with two yellow tulips in the middle. It was going to look stunning... except all the red tulips flowered first, and after they had withered two lonely yellow ones popped up. Hmph.
Anyway, I've watched my poppies busy doing nothing these last few weeks, even as tiny wild poppies sprung up all over the lawn. (I love the flowers that just appear in spring; the park near my house is bright green right now, covered with a sweep of yellow butter daisies, little white daisies and tiny orange dots.) So yesterday, two of my poppies finally popped up, and this morning four more of them too; the lobelias and snapdragons are faded and straggly, but they're still there so my idea wasn't a complete loss.
All this talk of poppies reminds me of something that happened when I was little. My mother and grandmother rearranged our farmhouse garden completely, moving beds around and stirring up earth that hadn't been touched for years. They stirred up some long-dormant seeds in that earth too, and a few weeks later a couple of lovely, old-fashioned poppies grew: Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy. My grandmother, ever prone to overreaction, dug them out immediately, lest officers from the Drugs Squad raid and charge her with cultivating an illicit crop, despite my mother's more sensible protestations that two poppies do not constitute a crop. And so ended my grandmother's career as a drug baron(ess).
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a yellow capsicum for salads instead of my normal green one, and it was delicious. This afternoon, I went to see if I could buy a yellow capsicum plant for my vegetable garden, to recreate the magic for myself. Bunnings (a hardware/nursery chain) seemed to be having some sort of children's day: they had a bouncy castle, a fairy floss vendor and representatives from the scouts and guides and nippers (junior lifesavers). Oh, and a native wildlife display: a sleeping baby wombat, a sleepy baby koala, a couple of terrified quolls (busy hardware stores not being their natural habitat) and, er, a marmoset, which is not native to Australia as far as I know. So I looked at them, bought my capsicum plant and came home, which was all very jolly.