Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: poppy pod

Growing poppies quickly became a mad love affair to me because they give so much and require so little in return. From happy seedling to freaky looking hairy bud, and then to breathtaking blossom and finally to their alien-like seed pods, these flowers are a feast to the eyes! I discovered the Poppy Game soon after they began blooming in my garden the first year, which is where you try to catch a poppy blossom opening up before the outer casing falls away. It happens fairly rapidly so you must be outside as the sun hits the flowers or you will likely find blossoms opening with the outer husk laying on the ground below. Sometimes the flowers seem to want to pose for me, and this particular June 1 morning in 2014, I managed to find an opening poppy with its casing AND a lovely poppy bud in the background fading into soft bokeh. :)

My front garden was where I first tried to grow poppies. I had a 5-year old packet of red poppies and thought, "These will NEVER sprout, but certainly not if I don't plant them!" So I walked outside and went to my small flower bed and promptly flung them all over the bed without care! I hoped that maybe a few would sprout. I was not prepared for what happened in the coming months. Instead of just a few, I think there must have been over 100 that sprouted and grew into a veritable WALL of red poppies!! Every morning I would come out and my jaw would drop at the incredible sight before me as new poppies opened! It was incredible. I fell madly in love with these flowers and watered them every day through our hot and unforgiving summer, and all the way until the first frost of winter killed the last of them. What a show! What a gift of beauty that continued month after month. If that weren't enough, the next spring, without any input by me, these flowers had reseeded themselves and put on ANOTHER show!! I added a mixture of poppies that year and soon the red ones were joined by a rainbow of lovely blossoms of different types of poppies. Even without care, they put on another show last year. Not a speck of water from me and still, these prolific flowers greeted me with another glorious springtime show! They didn't last as long, but still, I was happy to see them blooming until June! This picture is from May 2014, the year I had my raised bed garden, and here in my front garden I had irises and hyacinths and different kinds of allium (onion ), and others too. Seeing the poppies as the sun peeked over the hillside was a sight I relished, and I would be there with my camera to see the first rays of warm light shine through the crepe-like petals of these flowers I so adore.

Poppy blossoms grow inside an alien-looking pod that's covered with coarse hairs. As morning begins to stir and the sun's rays begin to shine across the land, mature pods crack open and soon fall away as the petals inside expand with the increasing warmth. Catching this event can be quite a challenge, but it's much easier when you have a garden overflowing with hundreds of flowers! I would leap out of bed each morning and stalk my flowerbeds, hunting for pods that were opening. Here is one that I captured in July 2013! Explored on January 25, 2014. Highest placement, #11.