Poppies, why has thou forsaken thee?

What do you do when your garden just can’t be dug up and the sun shines spring fever down on you two months early?

Buy seeds, of course.

Seeds are everywhere, grown in Michigan, Wisconsin, England, Ireland, Palmer (really), Oregon and Texas. Choices, choices, choices.

As strange as it sounds, I love to buy seed just to look at. The packages are always so colorful and inspiring. Always the perfect specimen shows up on the photo; never the scraggly, suffering creature that you have after you’ve planted it far too early under inadequate grow lights. Never the slug-eaten cabbage leaves from our gardens and heaven forbid a worm hole may show up on a basil leaf. No, these are lovely examples of what could be, and draw me in year after year.

I have seed packages years old and they are just as lovely as the day I bought them.

One day I should do a grand experiment and take a couple of seeds out of each packet, plant it and see which ones have stayed viable over the years. No, on second thought, that sounds like a lot of trouble. I would have to tape the envelope and that would mess it all up, wouldn’t it? Besides, I couldn’t shake the packets anymore and hear the sound of seeds inside, without the worry of them seeping out the opening, even if it were taped shut.

I love to give away seed packets almost as much as I love to keep them, so some seeds find their way into my home every year only to be given out within weeks. These are almost always the same ones, my favorites that I think everyone should have.

Johnny Jump Ups, Chinese Blue Delphiniums, Touch-Me-Nots, Forget-Me-Nots, Chives, and Poppies of all shapes and sizes.

The first six on this list are favorites because they self-seed once established and you need never buy a seed for them again (unless, of course, you are me, in which case you are compelled to repurchase them year after year, even though your garden is swimming in them).

The last one I am obliged to purchase because I can’t grow them.

As embarrassing as it sounds, Poppies and I don’t get along.

Ever since I can remember having the knowledge to tell plants apart, I have been in love with poppies.

The tall red perennial root poppies, the dwarf perennial Portage poppies with their delicate salmon blooms, the bright and annoying California poppies with their upside down fairy skirts fiery orange in the gravel, and of course the preverbal Iceland poppy with its hairy seed pods. And to make me crazy with grief are the tall purples with delicious black centers, aromatic and milky; a poppy lovers muse, and my nemesis. They mock me in my inability and taunt me with their grandeur. For years I have collected seeds for these beauties — from my friends, family, catalogs, and from a few yards that didn’t even know they were donating them. The result? At most a scraggly, puny plant of a few inches tall, pale, sad and soon to die.

For years I hid my anti-poppy ability behind things I can grow beautifully, but no more.

What is up with these plants? Is it my chemistry that oozes poison on them? Are they loved too much? I will likely never know and it brings me little solace that I can grow virtually any kind of a shrub from a cutting.

I want poppies, darn it.

People give them to me, they die. I plant them, they die. I pay good money for then (sadly true) and you guessed it — they die.

My gardening friends and colleagues laugh at me but they don’t get it. A magical garden to me would consist of dozens of varieties of poppies waving their fabulous heads in the wind, smiling at me.

Shall I never have my heart’s desire?

Likely not.

Nonetheless, this year finds me snatching up poppy seeds by the handful once more, so I can distribute them to others who may be more blessed with this genus than I.

If you receive such a strange thing in the post, don’t question it. Just spread the seed and hold your breath. And when they thrive and bring you pleasure, please don’t tell me about it. It’s really too painful to know.

Sally Koppenberg is a garden and food designer. She is the owner of Stonehill Gardens and The Red Beet, nursery & catering companies specializing in Alaska Grown foods, trees, shrubs, perennials and native plants. Contact her at stonehill@gci.net.