poppies

A Different Drift of White

~ shoreacres ~ 41 Comments
White prickly poppy (Argemone albiflora)

 

While reports of bluebonnet, Indian paintbrush, and phlox sightings have begun to multiply, I’ve yet to find a mention of this glorious native flower in the postings I’ve read.

No matter. The absence of mentions made finding this trio on a recent drive around the Willow City Loop, near Fredericksburg, wholly unexpected and purely delightful. Discovering pastures and ditches filled with additional flowers thrilled me even more.

Caught in a tangle of prickly pear, dead branches, and eroding rock, my first poppies of the year seemed perfectly situated: truly wild, and eminently Texan.

 

Comments always are welcome.

 

In Flanders Field

~ shoreacres ~ 26 Comments
Poppies at Wildseed Farms ~ Fredericksburg, Texas

 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
                                                   ~  John McCrae

Comments always are welcome. For more information on the poem, and McCrae, click here.

 

Carl Sandburg’s “Wind Song”

~ shoreacres ~ 26 Comments
Wind-blown white prickly poppies (Argemone albiflora) near the Colorado River
(click image for greater size and detail)

 

Long ago I learned how to sleep
In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away,
In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all,
In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, “Who, who are you?”
I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon and there I took a sleep lesson.
There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds.
Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine,
Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars:
Who, who are you?
Who can ever forget
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?

 

Comments always are welcome.

Just Before Sunrise

~ shoreacres ~ 41 Comments

With the sun not yet above the horizon, a flower of the white prickly poppy (Argemone albiflora) begins to emerge.

Fifteen minutes later, still crinkled and dewed, it shines its own light into the world.

 

Comments always are welcome.