In spring, the California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) swamp the front of my garden, and after a few weeks of exulting in their glory I have to pull them all out and uncover the irises, salvia and other plants that I want to see. A few more weeks, and the poppies have sprouted new leaves and sometimes blooms as well. Here’s an example at left, from just now.
The classic orange color is dominant, so orange flowers keep appearing, and I remove them as much as possible, so that my favorite pale yellow ones can shine.
But this week in the back yard, far from any other poppies, close by the bulbine, I saw a new red one blooming on a little plant. I think I may have scattered seeds for red California poppies here last fall, and forgot about it. This one flower is encouraging me to do that again.
Gladsome Lights 
How I would love to visit, and really hang out and learn from your garden! It is always a delight to read about it! Xox
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How I would love that, too! ❤️
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That’s a beauty. Wildseed Farms in Fredericksburg, Texas grows seed for a number of our native plants, but they also grow poppies. Somewhere I have photos of their red poppies, but I can’t find them on my blog or in my files. I really need to stop being so creative with my photo naming and stick with things like “red_poppy3”!
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Hahaha!
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I love finding surprises in the garden 🙂
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I love your poppies. A few orange ones are perfect for accents among the pale yellow ones.
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I think you’re right 🙂
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Every year the California poppies grow in and around the gravel parking area in front here. Mine are all the ordinary gold ones but they ask for nothing, they just bloom, and then I have to pull them out just like you do. I have an adorable picture of Grandson M when he was maybe a year and he’s sitting in a large area of gold there on the gravel.
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They are pretty wonderful indeed. I’m glad they will grow where you live!
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I think they are so lovely. I bought seeds once, on a visit to Cali. They never took here. Probably user error but who knows, could be climate!
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It’s the climate!
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You pull out the orange poppies? I thought I didn’t ever want orange and definitely not red in our garden but with a gardener/husband who loves them they show up anyway and now I’m coming to love anything orange. But I wish the reds could be in a corner hummingbird section instead. Although, your patch of yellow, white, orange, and red poppies is spectacular! I think it’s just that the red salvia RH brings home doesn’t do anything for me, despite him wanting it for the tiny birds he thinks like it. I never see them on it!
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I love orange flowers, too, in my garden, and have a lot of them. I will still have orange poppies even if I pull out most of them. But if I don’t pull them out, they will take over and dominate the space, and I won’t have any pale yellow ones anymore. To be a gardener one has to make these hard choices sometimes 😉
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Lovely.
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Poppies are so lovely and delicate! I’ve never grown them. Yours are so pretty!
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A lovely surprise, that red poppy! All those poppies are so pretty.
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Ooh, how lovely is that collection of poppies! I’ve seen some pretty fancy varieties with orange and red stripes. None have ever done well for me (even the dominant orange), but maybe it’s time to try them again.
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