There are poppies growing

in this garden. 

I flung a packet of old poppy seeds on to a garden bed some years ago and thought nothing more of it. I was simply clearing out a small box of old seeds at the request of the Senior Cat.

It was in late October of the same year he came in for lunch one day and said something like, "Did you plant some poppies near the lemon tree?"

After a bit we realised that some of the old poppy seeds I had thrown out had actually come up. We left them there and every year since there have been some poppies appear. They are of course the brilliant red poppies for remembrance. The year the Senior Cat had planted some they were in containers ready to pass on to a group that had asked for them. These were in the garden.

They are there with the cornflowers. I scattered the seeds for those at the same time. The Senior Cat was not a tidy sort of gardener. He refused to plant things in strict rows. It wasn't the way he saw nature. As a result we once had strawberry plants down the driveway at our previous house - and carrots under the hedge between us and the neighbour. 

The poppies were treated the same way. They have been one of those things which have "just happened" ever since. Is that true though? They are always there in the lead up to Remembrance Day. I know they reminded the Senior Cat of things he felt very strongly about. He never picked them. I have never picked them. We have always left them just as they are.  

They are always there to remind me of things I find painful but for which I am grateful. I am reminded of the people who have gone before me, of the people who gave up their lives so I could have mine. I am reminded even more strongly of my fiancé. He died not in a war but because of one. I sent his late mother a picture of the poppies that first year. They were there with the cornflowers, the lemon tree and the sweet peas starting to bloom. "I can almost smell them," she told me.

I am no gardener. I just try to keep the place "tidy" - but comfortable. The man who comes to help two hours once a fortnight wants to preserve the poppies as much as I do. He will "let nature do its thing" and perhaps there will be poppies again next year. 

When I leave this place, something I will eventually do, I may take some of the seeds with me and hope I can grow some more, grow them as a reminder of life.