It's Poppy Time!

At the end of our road, about a mile and a half away, the orange poppies grow along the ditch bank and bloom reliably every year. Yesterday, I stopped to take some photos of them, and not five minutes after I'd pulled into our driveway, our neighbor pulled into hers. Amanda ran over with a fistful of papery orange blooms and said, "What are these?!" I told her, "Poppies!" and I loved how excited she was over them. They've had that effect on our "neighborhood" for many, many years.

These poppies have grown on the ditch bank as long as I can remember. There used to be a house and barn there, but those are long gone. The poppies remain and they work their magic on passers-by.

Several people have tried to dig these up and take them home - myself included - but I've personally had no luck getting them to root well and survive. Poppies don't take well to transplanting, but my former neighbor managed to do it, without any special effort. I wrote about it two years ago in a blog post called Helen's Flower. I've always loved the poppies, and if you've read that post, you know why they hold special meaning to me now.

Poppies need excellent drainage and though we have heavy clay here, the slope of the ditch bank allows them to drain well. When they form seed pods, I'm going to collect seed this year and save it to plant in late winter. Perhaps then I'll have some ditch bank poppies in my own garden.