Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: Poppies

Two days ago, a group of us went south of Calgary to near Nanton, to visit the old homestead belonging to Jim Coutts. He is trying to convert his land back to its original, natural grassland, almost literally one little grass "plug" at a time. He has the most amazing garden, including brilliantly coloured flowersbeds and an area that grows a lot of different native grasses. Glorious red Poppies are growing everywhere in these garden areas. I would LOVE a garden like this!

There are just so many white, snowy, winter photos that I'm going through on my computer, that I need to look at something colourful. Also, it is such an overcast, dreary day today, though the snow is melting quite nicely. Hope this brings a little cheer to anyone living where the sun is in hiding today : ) Took this photo of glorious, glowing Poppies at the Reader Rock Garden on 30 June 2010. "Poppies have long been used as a symbol of sleep, peace, and death: sleep because of the opium extracted from them, and death because of the common blood-red color of the red poppy in particular. In Greek and Roman myths, poppies were used as offerings to the dead. Poppies used as emblems on tombstones symbolize eternal sleep. This symbolism was evoked in the children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which a magical poppy field threatened to make the protagonists sleep forever. A second interpretation of poppies in Classical mythology is that the bright scarlet colour signifies a promise of resurrection after death." From Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppy We have a winter storm warning in effect, that is supposed to bring 10-15 cm of snow from Saturday evening to Sunday evening. Guess we'll see what happens, tomorrow : )

Time for a bright splash of colour to be added to my photostream. I tend to post a warm-coloured image like this on a very cold or very grey day, but at the moment, our temperatures are way too hot for my liking, especially indoors, with 32C-34C in my computer room. All being well, after next week, I should have windows that I can actually open - the present ones get stuck if you try to open even just a few inches as the glass has come away from the vinyl (?) strips, so I have to keep them shut. After 14 years, at least, of everyone's complaints, all the windows are finally being replaced. Mine will be the last to be done and it sounds like mine will be done on Tuesday (depending on the weather, of course). Between now and then, I have two major, long botanizing days out, after which I can barely move, lol. There are certain things, though, that HAVE to be done before the window people knock on my door. It will feel so good once all this has been done, after being in limbo for at least seven months, not knowing when action would take place. Apologies to everyone for not commenting very much recently - this time of year, with all the botanizing trips, becomes kind of crazy. As well as a written record that is made of every species of plant, bird, insect, fungi, etc. that we see on each trip, I pick out certain of my photos to send out as a visual record of some of what we see, which always takes time to do. Life just gets insane for a few months, and I just can't keep up : )

Poppy buds, taken in a friend's garden on June 22nd.

This is such an amazing place to be, especially at this time of year, when the Poppy garden is still in bloom! This is just one very tiny corner of Jim Coutts' beautiful homestead garden, south of Calgary, near Nanton. A few of us visited for part of yesterday - must admit that I made a bee-line straight for the Poppies! When we made the annual trip last year, it was in September, and the Poppies were finished, to my great disappointment. It felt so good to look up and see BLUE sky after the "summer" we've had : ) Thanks so much to Jim for letting us descend once again upon his property! We enjoy and appreciate it so much. After lunch, we headed off to botanize a hilltop of prairie grassland belonging to Rob Blades - thanks, Howard, for leading us there and also letting us botanize the little bit of your land that we had time to enjoy.

Yesterday, a group of us went south of Calgary to near Nanton, to visit the old homestead belonging to Jim Coutts. He is trying to convert his land back to its original, natural grassland, almost literally one little grass "plug" at a time. He has the most amazing garden, including brilliantly coloured flowersbeds and an area that grows a lot of different native grasses. This is just one tiny area of his garden, looking out towards the distant Rocky Mountains. I LOVE Poppies, so I was in seventh heaven!