The poppies are throwing one last hurrah before all their petals drift to the ground. Many of them have dropped their petals already and are now plump seed pops with amusing hats. At the end of summer, once their seed pods have dried, I’ll turn the seed pops upside down and shake out their tiny black seeds. I’m looking forward to delicious poppy seed breads and poppy seed filling for poppy seed rolls.

Poppy seed pops have an ingenious design. As they dry, little holes open just under their caps. When they are ready, all you have to do to get their seeds is to turn the seed pods upside down. All their seeds will flow out. It would be great if other plants did this.

Beans start out as babies too, cute, tiny, slightly fuzzy, green babies. You know how when you look at someone’s baby picture, you can see similarities between their adult faces and their baby faces? It’s probably the same between baby beans and adult beans. Once the bean pods are fully grown, they probably have uncanny resemblances to their baby bean pods.

What about the order of beans in a pod? Are the first beans controlling, the second beans rebellious, and the last beans fun-loving? Has any scientist studied the characteristics of beans based on their order in a pod?

The bean pods below are way past their baby stage. These are the pods of the Shiro-hana Mame 白花豆 or White Flower Bean. They are so large, three to five beans make a meal.

The green plums are starting to blush. Every day I check to see if the deer have found them yet. Yesterday, instead of being greeted with plump green plums, I saw tinges of rose and purple. The first blush of ripening plums.

Wake up early enough and you can catch the poppies still sleeping. It’s kind of like sneaking up on your lover when they are snoozing. But don’t get too excited. The poppies won’t jump when you say, “Boo!” They’ll just go right on snoozing.

As the sun rises, the poppies will slowly wake up. They are quite the flirts. They don’t bother putting on any panties to cover up their private parts. When they are fully awake, they want everyone to see what they’ve got. Do they remind you of anyone you know?

It’s mid July. Time for the garden to go crazy. What was the big deal with the LSD craze in the 1950s and 60s?

During a 15-year period beginning in 1950, research on LSD and other hallucinogens generated over 1000 scientific papers, several dozen books, and 6 international conferences, and LSD was prescribed as treatment to over 40,000 patients (History of lysergic acid diethylamide).

All you have to do to get your mind blown is lie down between rows of towering corn laced with pumpkin and bean vines. There’s enough color and fantastical shapes and crawling creatures to entertain you all day. Pea and bean blossoms tantalize with their exquisite whites and sensual folds. Arugula blossoms become swarms of butterflies in the breeze. Purple splashed magentaspreen seduces with its deep purples.

Nothing compares to the crazy poppies. Is it any wonder that the Summerians figured out more than 5,000 years ago that this was the joy plant?