People tell me how easy poppies are to grow. I saw a smattering of them in the neighbors vegetable garden last week. What! I exclaimed, are those poppies? Oh yes, she said, I tossed some seeds in there that were stuck in a corner of the bag of seeds I planted out front. And there they were. Nice little poppies.

Let me tell you my poppy story. Last year, I got some poppies late in their season from a woman up the street who had a big clump of them. I transplanted them into my garden and they more or less took. This year, they came up and were about 3 or 4 inches high when I had a garden crew come in to dig up a couple of new beds for me. They did a magnificent job on the beds. Then they asked if I wanted them to edge the other beds. Well, yes, that would be great. Just edge around the half-circle one and the one along where the fence used to be (that's another story).

They edged and as a bonus yanked out a few weeds which was great. Except they yanked out my poppies. I was kind of surprised. But I went back up the street and the woman said, sure, take some more. So I did. I got the poppies back in and they were just beginning to perk up after their move when the gardening crew came back the next week - they were at the neighbors. I decided to have another smaller half-circle bed dug and asked if they would do this for me. They did another wonderful job.

Then with an extra 15 minutes to spare, they went back the bed they edge and did some more weeding. And yes, they yanked out the poppies again. I have told my story a couple of times around town and several people dropped off packages of poppy seed to me. I am going to try again. If I need another bed dug, I will either do it myself or watch the crew very closely.

The irony of all this is that poppies grow very easily and once you get them going, they keep on self-seeding and will spread around your garden quite quickly (which is why the woman up the street is so willing to give me poppy plants.) These seeds I have will be going into the ground as soon as the ground is ready to plant in the spring. Poppies like a nice cold snap to get going. They're easy to plant. You don't have to bury the seeds, just sprinkle them around and then sprinkle some earth over them. They like lots of sun, so they will go in the bed that gets almost full sun all day. They would be content with a minimum of six hours of sun but the more the better.