Sunday, June 20, 2010

Poppies will put them to sleep

I know Ken posted his poppy photos a few days ago, but now you have to see mine. The weather has been pretty yucky lately. Deeply overcast skies and some rain. The rain is good, but the dark days are depressing. Especially since we're just about at the summer solstice. Come on, sun!

Poppy fields are common in France and are simply stunning to see in full flower.

But we're busy. The vegetable garden is finally all planted. I put in a total of twenty-eight tomato plants, fifteen aubergines (eggplants), twenty-one peppers, six zucchini (courgettes), five patty-pan squash plants, four rows of sweet corn, a row of swiss chard, and some parsley and sunflowers. And radishes are ready for harvest. I grew it all from seeds.

This one is along a country road in the middle of nowhere.

Weeding needs to get done periodically, as does grass-cutting. And then there's the attic. Ken did a great job preparing the floor for finishing. On Saturday, I put the first coat of polyurethane on. The second coat will go on today. Then we'll see if we need/want a third coat. After that, we need to move the bed up there (or at least the mattress) so that we can put the guest bed in the old bedroom for guests who arrive in a week.

The title of today's post is a line from a very well-known American film. Do you remember it?

22 comments:

  1. As you or Ken said, this is a temperate climate. In my book that means it's always cold. Every twenty or thirty years there's a heat wave and everybody complains about the heat and why there is no air conditioning in France, such a backward country. Then it's back to normal — i.e. almost cold — and everybody complains that it's not warm enough! LOL —MDR

    That's human nature, isn't it?

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  2. Are the poppies grown as a crop. They are especially impressive en mass.

    It has been the coolest & wettest spring since recorded weather in Portland, Oregon USA. I need some sun!

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  3. Man! And I thought our local poppy fields were stunning. Yours are right out of The Wizard of Oz...and they're making me very sleepy. (Is that Bert Lahr poking his head up in the middle?)

    Gene

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  4. Beautiful pictures! But there's no place like home...

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  6. "The Wizard of Oz" of course. I didn't realize fields of poppies actually existed; I thought it was all the magic of movies. But I guess that's 'a horse of a different color' (ouch)!

    My goodness, those fields are stunningly beautiful.

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  7. (Lions and tigers and bears,) Oh, my! Great poppies shot. Congrats on the great job on the floor. I'd go for the third coat (when you buy the pre-finished wood, it has lots of coats on it.)

    Judy

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  8. Beautiful poppies...Is Billie Burke going to make it snow now? And pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

    What a great film. Hard to believe it was made over 70 years ago.

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  9. Another great film from that era: "Dinner at Eight."

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  10. Did Callie say "happy father's day" to both of you? I called my Dad in Rodez where it was 12 degrees C at 3 pm. Love the pictures of the poppies.

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  11. Nadège, your dad lives in Rodez? I have a book about Rodez. I'm not sure I finished it, but I have it somewhere... it was a historic treatment of some kind... someone doing research there. This inspires me to go hunt it out in my book shelves.

    Happy Father's Day to Callie and Bertie's papas, and to all the rest of you Fathers here :)

    p.s. I'm impressed with the fabulous WofOZ asides that your faithful and clever readers have managed to sneak in to every comment, Walt :)

    Judy

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  12. Poppy fields in Europe always remind me of John McCrae's poem, not happy thoughts.

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  13. I only remember one line that's supposed to be from a movie, and that wasn't even in the movie.

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  14. Very beautiful pics!
    I like bread scattered with poppy seeds

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  15. My French papa didn't really approve of poppies. He said if they infested a wheat field, they ruined the wheat. I never really figured out 1) exactly what he meant by "ruined," and 2) how a city detective knew much about farming wheat.

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  16. what gorgeous photos. These are the best I have seen in a long while. thank you.

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  17. all, thanks for playing along! Yes, the Wizard of Oz is it. But I have to rush along now, before somebody drops a house on me...

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  18. I cannot believe no one replied:
    Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more.

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  19. This is global warming, isn't it ??

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  20. OMG!!! I MUST go there!! Next year?!!! Is it near you?
    It's my dream to take pics of the poppies fields... Goes back to my love of the Wizard of Oz!

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  21. Chrissoup: Poppies ruin the wheat because the presence of poppy seeds in the wheat is considered contamination and reduces the price the farmer gets.

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  22. Just catching up with your blogs after a nasty bronchitis thing.

    The first time we refinished floors, we used 2 coats of finished and regretted it. By then, however, all the furniture was in place and the floor refinishers were onto the next job.

    Next time, we did 3 coats and were much happier with the durability of the results. YMMV.

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