My sister sent the beautiful photo of the first poppy to flower in her garden today and it sent me searching for my poppy scarf. No scarf will rival the delicate, fragile quality of the petals of the poppy. Yet my scarf is extremely fine, gossamer like chiffon silk and asks me to handle it gently like a flower......none of my big clunky necklaces with this... it snags so easily.
So many artists have tried to capture the transient beauty of the poppy in their individual styles, Georgia O’Keeffe in Santa Fe, Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh in France, and every budding amateur artist I guess. I am sure every person reading this will immediately remember seeing a single poppy bravely showing its cheery head in an unexpected place or in their hundreds, thousands turning a field or hillside to a sunset glow of scarlet. I hope it brings you a happy memory. Grab it!
My own memories are of the South of France as we drove towards our home in Andorra turning a hill or field into a scarlet sunset glow; orange poppies sprinkled between wild purple lupins on the headlands above the Golden Gate Bridge in California; a few struggling on some rough ground by the second green on the Pam Barton course at Royal Mid Surrey Golf Club; and as a child in a Scottish cornfield in front of our home.
One cannot think of a poppy without reference to Remembrance Day and how it all started with John McCrae, a Canadian surgeon’s simple poem ‘In Flanders Field’.
The poppy is a symbol of remembrance and hope. I have just found a packet of seeds. I will plant them in my small garden and save a few to scatter elsewhere when I break out of isolation!!
Busy Bee, Scarf Face!
Blog 57.