Indigenous Poppies and Hybrids

   I’ve long been a fan of Poppies.  I grew up in California where poppies grow wild up and down the coast as well as inland.  I no longer live in California but now grow them in our Pacific Northwest garden.  The poppy specimen above is from a seed tape that is sort of like felt with seeds embedded in it,  and are really very beautiful in my opinion.  My love of poppies doesn’t stop there, I also have Oriental Poppies, and all kinds of Hybrids that vary somewhat between each one.

    I have come to love flowers a great deal, and must admit to being envious of the  attention my mom lavished on her flower garden and the care she took to see that they were watered and nourished; planted in the right spot in their garden etc.  In fact my parents spent a great deal of time choosing their beloved plants and flowers and they used what I call the  “point and plant” cooperative method.  My mom not being able to bend to plant, would point to the spot she wanted them and my dad did the work or the toil  in the soil part.  It was really quite nice!  Unfortunately I did not feel as well-loved and cared for. 

    I’ve moved on and have grown to appreciate the well-tended flowers and have gardens of my own.   My Mother, not only taught me an appreciation for nature, but the allure of reaping the rewards for that which you have sown, literally and figuratively.  Additionally, I love art thanks to her encouragement, and have always dreamed of being an artist.  Well, that I am.  I am not a famous, nor well-known artist, but I practice my choice of vocation quite regularly and enjoy the rewards I’ve reaped from paying attention to the details that others take for granted in nature.  I enjoy the fine art of Macro-photography.  The interesting thing is that people are akin to flower gardens!

   Some people have little room so they have potted plants or do container gardening, that they can move about and have indoors as well as outside.  There are those of us that need to have well manicured lawns that they mow at least once a week, or they have hedges and “English Gardens” that are very neat and tidy with not a weed out-of-place, this is great for people with OCD (my opinion); I on the other hand, am very relaxed and love a garden that is wild-looking, as if Mother Nature herself was out having fun and wanted the kids to all get along and mix it up a bit.

   I think, and this is only my opinion, (I don’t speak for anyone else), most artists are of the ilk that they like to experiment and have bold bright colors around them, and that they/we like to try different things that most people are afraid to try on their own.    We like to paint outside of the lines, and don’t readily accept things that people tell us, kind of like Achim’s Razor, we’re what perhap doesn’t fall away from the razors edge, and we are likely to wonder in amazement at the infinite possibilites regarding what state Schrödinger’s Cat in the Box is in.   I love that there are at least a dozen variables to my poppies, and it’s not just in the petals and their size, but in the stamens, pistils, anthers, the color of the pollen etc. 

   I am not a Botanist, nor am I a Horticulturist, but I am a Nature Photographer who thought seriously about going to study Macro Photography in Rhode Island, and would love to have a microscope to take pics of the unseen worlds we take for granted yet are so fascinating in their structures, architecture if you will.   The patterns in nature are infinite and I’m not into actuarial or mathematics, besides, just in the oceans alone they find countless new species every year, let alone in the Rainforest of the World that are being destroyed as we speak or read!

   In the end, I feel sorry, really bad for the people who have to put everything, and everyone into nice tidy boxes, for fear that their microcosm will unfurl, unravel or simply become truly chaotic.  I will continue to paint my Tilted Sky Studio shed the color of gray called, “Stormy Night” by Glidden, rather than plain Jane gray that looks like my neighbor’s shed, which makes no sense since they/we can paint our mobile home blue, lilac, mauve, orange, yellow, brown or whatever… !  By the way, the management where we reside, force us to repaint my studio and it is now the color of everyone else’s car-port (except that the grooves are occasionally of Vincent Van Gough’s Stormy Night, or a gray with a greenish tinge?).

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