Flamboyant: French, present participle of
flamboyer to flame. Strikingly bold or brilliant; showy, dashing and colorful, elaborately styled.
Yes, and maybe even a little trashy. I brought home this Oriental Poppy plant in a box from the garden nursery three years ago. A lot of perennials don't bloom the first year so when I saw no blossoms I wasn't surprised. But when the plant started to look sick and threatened to keel over the next spring I was puzzled. Then I realized the whole area had become a depository for kitty poo. When the weather was cold and ugly I'd scrubbed out Thomas's litter box and absently tossed the dregs there, unwittingly marking the territory.
So I dug out and removed as much dirt from around the tainted area as I could and replaced it with potting soil. Then, for insurance, I dumped a bunch of cayenne pepper on top. It appeared the preventative measures worked,
but I still had to wait another whole summer and winter
before there were promises of blossoms.
The first flashy flower almost exploded when it finally decided to open.
By noon it was starting to look a little like a floozy on her way home from a gig.
She may look a little overdressed for my garden but I still like her. The Oriental Poppy is a hybrid with the Latin name of
Papaver orientale; close but not the same as the
Papaver somniferum or opium poppy. As much as I appreciated the morphine I got while recovering from surgery, I'd sure hate to be arrested for growing a controlled substance.
On a totally unrelated subject. I ran across a video on the internet that claimed Mountain Dew could be made to glow in the dark by mixing it with baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. It looked like a really cool trick.
But I did a little more checking. Snopes says it is a total scam. So don't waste a good soft drink trying to turn it into a giant glow stick.
