Poppies

 I have just discovered the amazing colour, form, and beauty of poppies. I had been given some from a garden a friend is watering while the owner is away.

I haven’t stopped looking at them, sketching, pressing the petals as they fall, photographing and videoing them as they dance in the breeze.

Even now when all the colourful petals have dropped I am now admiring the green twisted stems and the wee furry flower heads. 

My new favourite flower. 

But they have such a special place in my memory. My Dad grew poppies in our garden in New Zealand, but as a child I just saw them as another part of the natural, and cultivated botanical world I lived in.

Then my first trip to France when I was 22. When I saw the blood  red poppies growing wild in the green fields I suddenly got a tiny glimpse into the deep, deep meaning for my grandfather and many others wearing them every ANZAC day in Australia. He spent time in the trenches in France during WW1 and would have seen these wild poppies growing. Hardy, fighters, bending but not breaking.