A mammoth undertaking

The garden is full of poppies at the moment – it seems that the recent sun after the heavy rain earlier is just the sort of conditions they like. Most of them are small yellow Welsh poppies which grow like weeds. In fact, let’s be honest, they are weeds. At least, they’re entirely self-sown and not consciously chosen or planted. Christopher used to try to wage a totally ineffective war against them, but I rather like them so am happy to tolerate them in my flower beds, as long as they’re not crowding out any “real” plants.

I do also have a couple of big, showy oriental poppies in the bed underneath the apple trees. They are rather tatty, straggly plants, but the flowers are spectacular. I just love this deep red colour. Each flower only lasts a few days, but there is at least another dozen buds in various stages of maturity, so I should have a constant supply of poppy flowers to admire for the next few weeks.  Christopher planted them this one and its neighbour (which has lighter orange-red flowers) the year before he died, and I have simply left them to their own devices since. Fortunately the poppy plants seem to thrive on total neglect!