For years bright red poppies were successful in taking over the flower bed under my living room window. Big, bright and beautiful, with petals that looked like delicate crepe paper, they looked gaudy against the purplish grey brick of the house. They had to go.
For years I persevered in plucking them out each Spring, whenever their leaves would sprout out against the foundation under the window. Had I not planted them there originally myself, I would have thought they were weeds. I’m sure I’ll find a few again next Spring.
Why we’ve come to associate poppies with Remembrance Day is likely due to the fact that in Europe, poppies thrived in chalk soils that became rich in lime from the rubble created during battles. It was during the Napoleonic wars that it was first noticed that blood red poppies bloomed in battlefields. Why is it not surprising that even the plant world is affected by war?
When Canadian army medic John McCrae wrote his poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ in 1915 poppies were forever immortalized as the flowers of remembrance:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.— Lt.-Col. John McCrae
November 11, 2008 at 6:55 am
Thank you for the kind comment on my “Poppies”. I love this post on many levels, but most of all for one of my favourite poems; thank you…
November 11, 2008 at 7:23 am
In my last year of high school, Sister Maris Stella made all of us in the graduating class memorize ‘In Flanders Fields.’ More than three decades later, I’m thankful to still know it by heart.