So I bought three poppies from the Ace Hardware on Anastasia Island. They’re cold-resistant, have pink, yellow, orange and red blooms (sometimes all on the same plant) and give me a little escapist fantasy of seeing the poppy fields spread across Afghanistan.
However, the blooms have come up missing lately. Now I know why: my youngest toddler loves them! May I present Chloe Augustina Edwards the First, aged 1-and-a-half.
And below: An example of a non-decapitated poppy (although some of the blooms were damaged in the weekend’s hard frost.) I planted all three in a semi-circle beneath our crape myrtle, which is currently still dormant. They’re mulched.
UPDATE: A couple of days after the frost, these tough cookies were blooming again AND, they gave us at least a couple of seed pods!

Two dry pods were left after the hard freeze. They sprayed poppy seeds on my palm when I snapped them off with my fingernails.