The hills are alive with red poppies..

My first purchase for the villa arrived today. 5000 red poppy seeds. I know that they grow wild all over the green fields of Italy but it would be just my luck that I would have the only bare patch on the hillside.

In Australia red poppies are associated in my mind with war, so to see the photos of them growing wild throughout Italy is beautiful.

Any way I purchased these from a lady who lives in Tasmania. She has harvested these seeds from her own poppies. She sent me a photo and they have huge beautifully petaled scarlet red heads on a long vibrant green stem. I plan to plant them all along the drive way lane to the villa. Maybe the Australian poppies will make babies with the Italian poppies! Then they will be just like me!

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Remembrance Day and the Poppy Appeal

Remembrance Day in Australia commemorates the sacrifices of the armed forces and civilians during times of war, and in particular, WWI. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, a minute’s silence is observed across the country in memory of the Armistice at that time in 1918.

Poppies are sold each year to remember those who fell in times of war.

The Poppy's significance to Remembrance Day is a result of Canadian military physician John McCrae's poem In Flanders Fields. The Poppy emblem was chosen because of the poppies that bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in WWI, their red color an appropriate symbol for the bloodshed of trench warfare.