I’ve had individuals at times accuse me of being a little paranoid. I wouldn’t go so far in description, I’d be more apt to describe my general state of mind as distrustful. I don’t believe anyone in particular is out to get me, but I don’t believe that most people have any beneficial intentions either.

A long time ago, in a gentry far, far away, I was actually quite optimistic and trusting. After several notable kicks in the proverbial groin left me with three Adam’s apples, I’ve collapsed to a different station in life.

So, when a bearded stranger shows up at my door at dinner time, wearing the thin blue pajamas that they pass as medical wear these days, you can imagine my general preconceptions: I’m either dealing with a loony, or they think I’m a loony and we’re going to hold a little ultra-violence therapy. Neither struck me as appealing.

I don’t remember the particulars of the conversation very well, because I was running on empty that day, having had but three hours sleep the night before, but it eventually boiled down to this gentleman wanting to harvest some prickly poppy seeds, from our lone prickly poppy growing out by the sidewalk.

As it turns out, the man in medical blue enjoys gardening and working with wildflowers and stated that prickly poppy’s are rather hard to find and difficult to grow. Not that I’d know the difference. I kill plastic plants and have even seen flowers on wallpaper wilt when I’ve leaned against the wall too long, so I’m not qualified to know more than the thing is a plant. I’ve deduced that, because it isn’t walking around eating other things and doesn’t make any noise. That sums up my horticultural knowledge.

He explained that he believed the plant was an annual, requiring new seeds every year and that he had never managed to get the seeds he had acquired in the past to grow. My wife quickly explained that, not only is the plant perennial - this one is going on five years now - but that she did nothing to prompt its growth. It just showed up, looked nice enough, so we left it in place. It has since flourished and grown to bush proportions. A savage bush at that, as it lives up to the title “prickly” with zeal. Without the blossoms, its rather scary looking, actually. If it starts walking around eating other things, I’ll dig out the kerosene.

I should take a moment to explain that we’ve been in a long, drawn out process of “zero-scaping” our yard. I don’t find it particularly intelligent to be watering Kentucky blue grass in a desert, so we’ve been very slowly transforming an once errant lawn into a drought tolerant garden of native species. My lack of horticultural experience has not helped. I have to ask at every turn whether it is a good plant, or a weed. As far as I can tell, gardening is the process of killing all of the hearty and evolutionarily successful plants and replacing them with weak, inferior plants (requiring constant maintenance) which are inexplicably declared to be more aesthetic, either by color or some other nebulous merit. This prickly poppy appears to be on the edge of the rule. It’s a “weed”, but its flower is aesthetic enough to spare its life.

I don’t get it.

In any case, with luck the front yard will be done this year and the back yard will be done before the sun turns into a red giant.

The wildflower gardener quickly made a deal with my wife to return with a medley of wildflower seeds, in exchange for a harvest of prickly poppy pods. (Say that ten times quickly.) She was all for it and at some point we’ll do the transaction and we’ll start planting things that I will be confused over for many years to come.

No worries, however, as I have plenty of kerosene if things get out of hand.