Most gardeners are green-fingered. I'm just green. I know nothing. However, I did manage to identify a red flowery thing that's recently started exploding under the kitchen window as a poppy. Wallowing in the warm glow of extreme chuffedness at having finally made a correct horticultural analysis, I was then informed by my good chum blogger Debs that it may well be, more specifically, an opium poppy. So I'm now seriously considering scratching the side of one of its seed pods with a sharp fork, collecting the sap, then going on a search through some dusty old boxes for a smelly old pipe that I last fired up many moons ago as a moronic student in a hopelessly failed attempt to appear vaguely intellectual.

P.S. - Have just Googled 'poppy' and it would appear that this isn't an opium variety. Nor is it any one of many others that were listed. In an increasingly frantic search to correctly name this attractive interloper, I then Googled 'poppy family' and am now delighted to announce that beneath my kitchen window I apparently have a re-emerging, little-known, early '70s, Canadian pop group.

Er, would greatly appreciate further assistance in identifying this mysterious growth...

P.P.S. - Have just spoken to Georgie and, surprisingly, The Oracle can't say exactly what it is. However, she reckons it could be a member of the opium family although 'proper' opiums are pink with a single layer of petals. Apparently she planted it by tossing a few poppy seeds in from a cheap seed packet. The mystery continues...

P.P.P.S. - Thanks to clever clogs Debs and The Gardener for their sterling detective work in identifying this blooming thing as Papaver Somniferum, otherwise known as the Scarlet Peony Poppy (an opium jobby). Thanks also to everyone else for much appreciated suggestions. Such a relief we got there in the end. 'Course, I knew it was a scarlet popover somnambulisty poppy thingy all along. Just testing.

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