Poppies

I love poppies. I love red poppies, opium poppies, wild poppies, California poppies. I love fields of them, waving on their slender stalks. I love that they are so vibrant and alive, yet cannot survive for long once picked. They love to be outside--don't mess with them!

You know this--this is my picture here.

Today we plant some in our front yard and pray they will come up in spring.

It won't be a field of gold, or a hillside of yellow, or a waving valley of red. But it will be a tiny carpet of California poppies in Whitley Heights--a small ode to this state I love.

Do You Love Them?

Like I love them?

OK, I admit it. I adore poppies. I love red poppies--the kind that coat Europe and that the Afghan hill tribes harvest to make Opium. I love wild pastel-colored poppies. And, now that I am a Californian, I love California poppies. I adore when they pop up alongside the highways, and turn the hillsides gold. To me they are magic.

You can't pick them. They die.

And you can't really capture them--not really--unless you are a painter and you mix the perfect color of orange, that shows the light shining through the petals.

But now you see, my blog is covered with California poppies--shot by my beloved on his iPhone.

What is the flower that makes your heart dance?

Is it irises? Peonies? Roses? Nasturtiums?

Tell me!