The Poppies That Always Came Back
Written by Dave Hornbaker
Mom loved poppies.
She didn’t love them in an “oh, those are pretty” casual way. She loved them in the way you love something that feels like part of who you are. Wherever there was a garden, there were poppies. Especially in the front yard. They showed up along edges, in beds, tucked between perennials, and sometimes in places no one remembered planting them at all. That was the magic of them. They cheerfully reseeded themselves every year, as if they had been invited. These were the heirloom poppies like Papaver somniferum. The old varieties that carry stories in their genetics. Lavender, white, pale or hot pink, and endless variations in between. Mom helped them along, of course. Some years intentionally, some years without even realizing it. In the fall she gathered the dried pods. I remember watching her shake them, listening to their hollow rattle. She knew what it meant. Some seeds were carefully saved, others passed along, and many simply slipped away as she moved through the garden. They fell where they wanted, and she let them.
Those poppies fed people, too. She collected the seeds carefully and used them to make poppyseed bread, the yummy yellow cake kind. It would show up to lucky homes warm on a plate, fresh out of the oven. She shared poppyseed with anyone who wanted to bake or grow their own flowers. The instructions were always very simple: “Scratch up some soil and spread some seeds.” She wanted people to feel that joy year after year
There was that one year when joy met chaos. I came home with six ducklings from Tractor Supply. An impulse buy. They lived in the basement at first, then graduated to the yard, where they promptly discovered the gardens. It turns out that ducks have very strong opinions about food. Their favorite thing in the world was the poppy plants. That year, they ate nearly every single one. Ninety-nine percent might actually be conservative. They worked with focus and enthusiasm. The water lilies didn’t survive either. It was a total garden wipeout in a way that would have broken the heart of someone who needed things to stay just so. But that wasn’t my mom. She laughed. She shook her head. She accepted it, for the most part, as part of loving living things. She knew that once you invite life in, you don’t get to micromanage it. Gardens change. Ducks eat poppies. And somehow, it’s still okay.
The poppies came back the next year. Of course they did. Because she had scattered them everywhere. Because she had shared them so generously. Because she trusted that good things, once released, tend to find their way back somehow.
I think about her every fall when my kids and I make our rounds through the garden. We save seeds the way she did. Unhurried, intentional, and a little bit reverent. Pumpkins and gourds, peppers and basil, zinnias and cosmos, sunflowers, love-in-a-mist, melon. We spread them out to dry, label the envelopes, and by Christmas we’ve put together little seed packets to give to friends and family.
It started as something simple to do together, but it’s become one of my favorite things we share as a family. This quiet, hopeful act of gathering up what the season gave us and passing it on. Mom would have loved it.
I know she’s the reason we do it at all. She’s the one who taught me, without ever sitting me down to say so, that seeds are worth saving. That joy is worth spreading. That the best things in a garden, and in a life, are the ones you give away.
That was who my mom was. A flowery, beautiful soul who loved to share flowers, food, joy, and her time. She cared for plants, animals, and people with the same open, loving heart. Friends, family, customers, and sometimes complete strangers walked away with something from her: a packet of seed, a bouquet, a slice of cake, a smile, or a conversation that lingered longer than planned but felt exactly right. If her poppies are growing in your garden, then her story didn’t end. It took root. Her legacy lives on in every bloom, in every seed saved and shared, in every garden where those flowers return year after year. She’s still giving, still teaching, still showing us how to live gently and share freely.
That’s the thing about a life well shared. It never really ends. It just keeps growing.