poppies

A core childhood memory I have is learning about poppy seeds from my grandma. I’m four years old and we’re in her garden in late fall in Texas. She walks up to a tall plant (tall to a 4 year old) and says, “stick your hand out.” I stick out my tiny hand and watch as tiny black seeds come tumbling out of a giant bulb while she shakes it. What? It feels like a miracle. We spent the rest of the afternoon searching the garden for poppies who had lost the last of their petals and the tops had dried up. She took a small glass jar with a yellow lid and filled it with as many seeds as we’d collected. I’ve been trying to become a gardener the last few years and finally planted those poppy seeds. I don’t know if any of them took root after being stored for 30 years, but I do know that I rejoice each time I see a poppy come up out of the ground. When the petals are all gone I take my kids around to collect the seeds. And you know what? It still feels like a miracle.

You may notice that a lot of my art has been vectorized in illustrator, but in this particular pattern, they were sent straight over from photoshop.