Easy Poppy

When I grew poppies this year, I was unsure exactly what would happen, or where the delicious seeds would emerge from.

This was the first one to bloom, 'Hungarian Blue', after months of waiting.

I had planted the seedlings in October or so. And they took a while to get going.

The gorgeous flower lost its petals in a couple days, after which it looked like this for a month or so. The plant withered and the seed pod began to turn brown.



I had a lot of brown pods at that point, so I cut them all off and got out one of the clean, empty baby food jars that had been waiting to make itself useful (in my cupboard for a few years).

I used a sharp knife to carefully saw off the top of the seed pod. Then I poured the contents into the jar.

About 2 tablespoons worth of seeds came out of the 5 pods I had. One of the pods was still a bit greenish, so the seeds hadn't turned to the magnificent dark grey blue yet. They were still a bit reddish.





It was just enough to make a batch of lemon-poppyseed muffins.

The bells are ringin'

We thought this was some sort of weedy tree when we first moved in. The home inspector said we should trim it back because it was so close to the house and roof. Then a month or so ago it started blooming spectacularly.

It's called Tecoma stans, or Yellow Bells. It's also known as esperanza, which is a name I just love. In general it's a shrub, meant to grow about 12 feet tall and 6 feet wide. But here it is at least 20 feet tall, towering over our home. The branches are so loaded down with these fantastic, sweet-smelling flower clusters that some of the branches have bent and broken.

The bees and hummingbirds are going absolutely nuts over this Southwest native. And I am too! It's going to bloom all through the winter.

I'm going to try trimming some of the long branches with blooms on the end and using them inside as cut flowers.