Reading about poppies that winter, I wondered if it was possible to untangle the flower’s physical beauty from the knowledge of its narcotic properties. It seemed to me that even the lady garden writers who (presumably) would never think of sampling opium had been subconsciously influenced by its mood-altering potential; Louise Beebe Wilder tells us that poppies set her “heart vibrating with their waywardness.” Merely to gaze at a poppy was to feel dreamy, to judge by the many American Impressionist paintings of the flower, or from the experience of Dorothy and company, who you’ll recall were
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