The Poppy Trail
"The Poppy Trail" is my newest piece. I want to try it out some by posting excerpts here. The story follows a fanciful adventurer and his way of collecting poppy pods from neighborhood gardens, hijinks and hilarity follow (maybe not always).
Excerpts from the Poppy Trail
I don’t think anyone attends to the poppies, there are not as many as I first saw. The pods I picked on the first visit filled the bottom half of a large leaf sized trash bag. I didn’t get them all, but most. They grew among the tall grass-like vegetation as they do still. Thrilled, the first time I parked half on the road, put my “four ways” on, there wasn’t enough space because of a ditch to park entirely on the roadside. This time I do the same after spying a number of pods, but traffic proves a nuisance. Vehicles pull up behind my small pickup with its four-ways flashing and look to me to see “what’s the matter.” Just go around I say in my head. I wave them on. Wearing an old curved up Lowes baseball style cap, dressed in dirty dusty clothes, I think some of the motorists figure me for a country guy with car trouble. Nice they act so neighborly, but I just want them to move on and let me get to the business of cutting and snapping off pods...
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Most don’t know about the pods. The pods wouldn’t be here if they did. Last year I picked a few of the pods and came back later for more. I waited too long, the poppies had been mowed down and collected, along with much of the grass and weeds growing on the narrow strips along the roadside. Oddly parts of the roadside didn’t get a mowing. I couldn’t determine if the poppies had been cut for being poppies or for fire prevention or other non-poppy reasons. This year suggests the latter. Poppies have returned, but in less number and no one has yet mowed them down. I theorize someone planted them years ago and now the plants are self-seeding. It shows poppies don’t thrive as well on their own. It helps if someone looks after them.
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Once the seed takes hold it doesn’t need much but sunlight and a comparatively small amount of water. I tried to grow some poppies on Sally’s property (without her knowing it). I found spots with sunlight, which were arid (high and dry rather than low and wet), but no luck. One day, however, in late spring plants bloom in her gravel/rock driveway. It seems I dropped a couple seeds in the driveway and the sun reached through the stones to help germinate them. I am amazed and delighted, easy pickings. Sally likes the flowers, but doesn’t want any trouble for having the plants on her property. I assure her I will get rid of them (after I harvest the pods). I take the plants out, making sure plenty of seeds fall back into the driveway, but the poppies never grow back, which bolsters my diminishing return theory and is why I usually am on the trail in neighborhoods where people like to plant and grow flowers – they look after their poppies.
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With cars stopping and one woman even rolling down her window and asking if I need help I cut things short (as I like to do with poppies). Would be nice if I could say, “oh just grabbing some of these poppies here I will be gone in a few, but thanks, appreciate it.” And they would answer, “cool have a nice time.” That isn’t going to happen. One reason, they don’t say “cool.” Why – it’s city talk and something a hippy type might say. Can’t have that. The second reason, I would never mention poppies. Someone would call the cops, eliminate a spot on the trail. People generally find drugs to be bad, even though most of them are taking some kind of drug every day, go figure. ..............
(more to come)
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