This morning I was thinking about what to post today. I thought about posting a list of things I’m THINKING about but not BLOGGING about. Just the topics. Not my thoughts about those topics. While I have plenty of thoughts and opinions, I’m less inclined to share them publicly than I once was. I’m not a journalist. I’m not an editorial writer. I’m not a pundit, political commentator, or analyst. Why should I add to the noise of all the people who won’t SHUT THE FUCK UP?
Did I say that out loud?
I’m shelving the idea for now, because today I went to Target (Here’s the truth: Today I went to Target to buy Target popcorn.) and I found this book, and I’m already crazy about it.
There are three thousand either/or questions in the book, and you have to tell WHY you pick what you pick. I’m pretty good about picking one thing over another, but maybe not as forthcoming about why. So here is a book that will keep me honest, and I’ll pick a question at random when I do these posts.
Today’s question, No. 1151: Poppies or sunflowers? (and why…)
Sunflowers. Sunflowers are life and light. They grow in large fields in the Midwest and once surprised Tom and me on a trip. They remind me of a trip Lynne and I once took to Alabama. They grow in yards and gardens and out of sidewalk cracks. They are hardy and happy and they make me think of Vincent Van Gogh’s art.
Poppies are pretty, and I love seeing fields of them in photos and art, but I always connect them to loss and death because of the war poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae, where poppies “blow between the crosses, row on row.” Poppies have become the symbol of ceremonies commemorating the war dead. War and its losses hurt my heart.
Feel free to comment with your choice or use the question on your own social media.
Alabama, 2011
Poppies. They are small and so delicate. the petals are so thin and yet they are strong and carry the weight of the world. I think they are aware of the honor they carry.
Nice perspective.
Sunflowers, because “one plant” produced several hundred flowers and grew well above my parent’s garage. Nobody knows how that happened, but picture that field as one giant tree like plant growing upwards. It hasn’t happened again since. My guess is that a squirrel wanted to give back to my parents the sunflower (my parents feed them corn cobs often), so they buried the sunflower at the gate next to the garage in the best viewed spot from their tree and most often daily path of my parents.
Aw, I’m going to always think of it as squirrel magic. That must have been the coolest plant–like a Jack and the Beanstalk plant!
Sunflowers make me think of France, whereas poppies make me think of England.
Poppies make me think of YOU, because you have so often written about the wars and those who fought them, including your relatives. I appreciate reading your perspective from a different world that was so profoundly impacted. As I recall, you’ve written about this very poem and about poppies.