1306 - Poppies

These poppies volunteered in the front gardens next to the garage doors.

120613 - Cabbage Poppies

During our dry, warm winter and spring, cabbage poppies have thrived in the gardens, some plants reaching nearly six feet tall.

Each flower lasts only a day or so and is about the size of your hands cupped together to catch water.

120318 - Cabbage Poppy

It was very windy today, but I managed to take this photograph of a cabbage poppy in bloom at the top, left of the terraces.

Always rather spindly, it nearly didn't overwinter, its first batch of flowers failing to bloom last fall after several days of rain, so this tiny red-and-purple flower is a treat.

1202 - Cabbage Poppy

This cabbage poppy surprised us when it sprang up among the roses in the garden between the garage doors. Its flowers are nearly as big as your hands cupped together to catch water.

1201 - Cabbage Poppy

Our unusually dry and warm December encouraged this cabbage poppy to bloom, its flower half the size as ones blooming in the spring, but spectacular nonetheless.

1103 - Poppy

In early March, between downpours that seemed to last for days, I photographed this poppy blooming at the top of the gardens.

It is a hardy perennial that has been in the gardens since we were first able to reach this area after terracing the hillside five or so years ago.

08 June - Purple and Pink Poppy

This cabbage poppy bloomed one or two months after the others began blooming with the winter salmon sweet peas.

It grew to about three feet, its flower a stunning, electric purple and pink nearly as large as your hands cupped together to catch water.

Now, a month after this photograph was taken, the flower has long faded away and its seed pod continues to dry in the sun.

This last weekend, I collected several hundred cabbage poppy seeds from ten or twelve seed pods.

080601 - Pink and White Cabbage Poppy

Several pink-and-white cabbage poppies have shown up in the front gardens this year, some well over six feet tall.

During last month's heatwave, the flowers bloomed and the petals fell off all in the same day.

But now that it is cool and foggy again in San Francisco, the flowers last several days. They are about as large as your hand.

080601 - Red French Flounce Cabbage Poppy

Here's a photograph I took this weekend of the only red French flounce cabbage poppy to show up in the gardens this year.

It is just under five feet tall and very stout, withstanding the blasting wind coming up the hill from the ocean better than anything else in the gardens.

I don't recall any of the French flounce cabbage poppies from last year having several flowers in bloom at once like this one. Each of its flowers is as large as your hands cupped together to catch water.

07 Summer - Upper Terraces

These are two photographs from early summer, 2007, when the poppies to the right of the staircase were putting on a show.

The sky-blue sweet peas climbing the fence at the top of the hill were amazing, too.

0706 - Pink and White Poppy

Here's a photograph of a pink-and-white poppy that bloomed in June, 2007.

The flower was as large as your hands cupped together to catch water, and the stock stood over five feet. Each cabbage poppy in the front yard produced a dozen or so flowers.

That fall, I let several flowers go to seed, then carefully collected and dried the pods. In early winter, I sprinkled hundreds of seeds in the garden bed behind and above the lemon tree.

I was amazed when poppies came up as thick as a lawn, and I was equally amazed when the birds ate every one of them in just a few days.

080318 - Winter Sweet Peas

Here's a short video of the fride (FRont sIDE) garden, front gardens and, especially, the winter sweet peas, so you can see how much they've grown in just a month.

Also, in this video, you can see columbines, delphiniums, two rose bushes, cabbage poppies, foxgloves, coreopsis, California poppies, tiny hollyhocks, and a second planting of sweet peas in the fride garden. These sweet peas are in partial shade, so they grow slower than the ones next to the cabbage poppies.

This video starts with an echium called "Tower of Jewels." It grows to nine feet, and blooms up the length of its stock, its flower clusters a show-stopping scarlet red.

070725 - First Oriental Poppy

This was the first Oriental hybrid poppy to bloom in the summer, 2007. We had planted four others earlier that spring, but all apparently died.

Yesterday, while watering and weeding the gardens, I noticed four plants that looked neither like weeds nor like any of the varieties of annual poppies Phil and I have been seeding throughout the winter.

I was happy to realize they were the four poppies long thought dead.

I read in a flower catalog that Oriental hybrid poppies have twice the number of flower petals as their natural cousins.

070813 - Oriental Poppy Salmon

This was our first oriental salmon poppy to bloom.

The plant is still massive and even in mid-winter has sent up two flowers, though neither is as spectacular as this one.

080218 - Winter Salmon Sweet Peas and Cabbage Poppies

These photographs are for my friend in Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love is still in the clutches of Old Man Winter.

I took these photographs today in our front yard. You can see the winter sweet peas are not only working their way up their trellis, but they've begun growing flower shoots.

Sweet peas are one of my favorite flowers, so I'm looking forward to these going into bloom.

Phil calls the poppies in front of the sweet peas by their common name, "cabbage poppies." They are sold under names like "breadbox poppies" or "Turkish poppies." They grow to five feet or so and produce flowers the size of your hands cupped together to catch water. And, yes, they smell unmistakably like cabbage.

The yellow flowers in the next bed are coreopsis and thrive well in San Francisco. Between them and the poppies you can see a foxglove.