Oriental Poppy

What’s blooming in the area: Tea, miniature and shrub roses; Apache plume, locust, catalpa, four-wing saltbush, silver lace vine, yucca, red hot poker, peony, fern-leaf globemallow, yellow sweet clover, alfalfa, sweet pea, oxalis, tumble mustard, white evening primrose, scarlet bee blossom, bindweed, tahokia daisy, goat’s beard, hawkweed, plains paper flower, spine and hairy golden asters, common and native dandelions; brome, three-awn, sacaton and rice grass; western stickseed and needle grass releasing seeds. First hay cut, first buds on daylilies.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Dr. Huey and Persian yellow roses; black locust, iris, golden spur columbine, hartweig, perky Sue, chocolate flower, fern-leaf yarrow, blanket flower, coreopsis; buds on butterfly weed, anthemis and Mexican hat; zucchini and nasturtium seeds up.

Looking east: Jupiter’s beard, Maltese cross, oriental poppy, small-leaf soapwort, snow-in-summer, pink, sea pink, coral bells, winecup, rock rose, pink salvia, pink evening primrose, Mount Atlas daisy; buds on coral beardtongue and bouncing Bess.

Looking south: Blaze, rugosa and rugosa hybrid roses; spirea, raspberry, beauty bush; bud clusters on red grapes.

Looking west: Purple beardtongue, catmint; buds on sea lavender and Rumanian sage; daffodil leaves turning yellow; perennial four o’clock up.

Bedding plants: Snapdragon, sweet alyssum, petunia, moss rose, Dahlberg daisy; grasshoppers eaten French marigold leaves.

Inside: Aptenia, bougainvillea, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Hummingbird, yellow bellied bird with black and white under wings, geckos, cabbage and sulphur butterflies, moths, bumble bees, flies, grasshoppers, black ants, aphids.

Weather: Rain with thunder and lightening Thursday, winds all week, daily temperature range rising from 40-80 to 50-90. 15:52 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: No one plants a garden to save money. William Alexander figured when he spread the costs for creating his vegetable bed over twenty years and added the current year’s expenses, his Brandywine tomatoes cost him $64 a piece. He saw no way to invoice the groundhog for its share.

I finally got an oriental poppy to bloom. I figure I spent $350 over the past fourteen years to get that first flower. My price includes seeds from at least four countries bought from seven retail seedsmen, potted plants grown by at least three wholesalers sold through five outlets in three cities, seedlings ordered from three out-of-state nurseries, and bare roots from another three. No payment from the rabbit.

I didn’t average $25 a year. Every fall when nothing succeeded I’d swear I’d never do that again. Then when the catalogs arrived, I’d be tempted to splurge. Most years, I controlled my impulses until I saw seeds in the store and think, it’s only .89. Of course that was 1995; this year the same seeds were 1.59.

I could usually rationalize my previous failures had been caused by weather, and hope the coming spring would be different. Poppy seeds are so tiny, they blow away, and can’t be covered with anything heavy because they need light to germinate.

Each year I’d be tempted again when I saw the actual plants on the shelves. It wasn’t my self-control that saved me, but the fact that most years the stores didn’t carry the tall, brilliant oranges. Instead, they sold pink Victoria Louise and white Royal Wedding, or, once in a while, deep red Beauty of Livermore. A few years ago, they tried the better behaved dwarfs, Pizzicato and Allegro.

The difficulty with getting poppies established is that the deep, branching taproots don’t like to be transplanted. The ones grown in pots are still too small to adapt when they’re sold in late spring, just before they go dormant for the heat of summer. Unfortunately, I usually made matters worse when I exposed them by removing potting soil that won’t absorb water in my ground.

After a few years of abstinence, I’d think maybe this year, this 1997, this 200, maybe I’ll get lucky, maybe we’ll have a normal summer, maybe a cold enough winter. In the fall, more remorse.

Until 2006 when something did survive, even if it has turned out to be pink with black blotches and slightly ruffled petals. The flower lasted little more than a day before a petal fell off exposing the collapsing purple stamens that surrounded a green pistol that had a purple ovary forming on top. Then came the wind, leaving two buds to open.

If this were Papaver somniferum, I would now be excited because I could soon slit the pod to stimulate the formation of the chemicals that are refined into opium and recoup some of my losses. But Papaver orientale has different alkaloids, which may not even be in my plants. It probably only carries the species name by courtesy, since the 28 light-orange chromosomes have been crossed with the 14 from their dark-red bracteatum cousin since the 1880's to get those unwanted colors.

If my neighbors weren’t growing bright scarlet flowers that shimmer from a distance, my quest for flowers that mesmerize when the sun filters through their petals should be dismissed as an addiction. However, since I began at least three people have succeeded with plants that taunt me with my failure.

When I moved here, one yard down the road was a solid mass of burnt orange. In January of 2005 someone cleared out the thistle leaves and replaced them with gravel and bare dirt. Poppies are stronger than that. They can survive mountain grassland droughts in western Asia to live a hundred years. The root of an established plant can regenerate from a fragment left in the ground. Those four-petaled chalices are slowly come back, hiding under daylily leaves.

Some would say $350 is cheap for a plant the lives to be a hundred. Of course, they’re thinking of mature trees and including the backhoe operator. I’d never risk that kind of money on a single plant in this environment. I’m much too rational. I may be impulsive but I’m not foolish.

Notes: Alexander, William. The $64 Tomato, 2006.

Photograph: Oriental poppy, 5 June 2008; pod forming at lower left.