Hi George and all - There's a rather invasive, bright red, single-type oriental poppy here on Cape Cod. It's beautiful, and looks more like an annual with its fragile flowers. In my current neighborhood, I understand that it was started by someone down the block, to the north of me, and its been parading southward for about 40 years. I first saw it in my yard along the northern boundary, and I was just outside (in my bathrobe, LOL) pulling it up from around some less vigorous plants near the southern edge of the yard. I am nearly positive that the seedlings I'm pulling up are viable, and also that if I check my nursery pots there are lots of volunteers mixed in with the verbena bonariensis (and, hopefully, whatever is supposed to be in the pots). It's a bit of a pest, but awfully nice when in flower. Ego, it would be a good companion for VB and Siberian Iris, but if this fence garden is to the north of the property, you'd need to know that they would not stay there without putting up a fight - they'd want to colonize the whole garden. My fancier OPs also reseed nicely, if not dead-headed, and I think that if I just put a ripe seed pod into a pot I'd have some more plants. They flower when quite young - 1 or 2 years from seed.

Actually I think coral is a good description for the poppy in Dave's photo too. It is a pretty color, especially combined with other deep blue flowers or deep purples. Photos can be deceiving, especially pale ones, but I see that poppy colour as having an orange undertone - like a drop of orange paint, perhaps half a drop of red, with lots of white added. For me pink can't have any orange undertone. Pink would be a drop of red paint with lots of white with no orange undertone. When it comes to calling anything mauve or purple or plum I think - a drop of red paint, 1 or more drops of blue and lots of white and / or some black for darker shades. Forgive me if I seem picky - I trained as a florist so I think in pure colours from the colour wheel.

Oh, I do Floral. My photo ID skills are absolute rubbish (dodgy eyes, no sense of scale, completely filthy monitor and so on) - I dunno why I bother. Not so totally hopeless IRL and thanks to a crazed hort-tutor, I am more on the ball with winter twigs (the painful Friday afternoon 'Idents' test) and surprisingly good on apples and roses.

You're more of an expert on pines, Ken, maybe I don't have to move either one. But don't you think the 'Sherwood Compact' looks overwhelmed to the left of the poppy? When I planted the Sherwood last fall (and the poppy was dormant, nowhere to be seen), I made sure to give it a good few feet in all directions for eventual size and spaced it out evenly in relation to other plants. But then the poppy sprang back to life within a foot or so of the Sherwood. I just think they're too close to each other, for growth purposes when the Sherwood gets to its expected 2 to 3 feet in diameter and even now based on aesthetics. If I have to move the Sherwood eventually, I'd rather do it this year when it's new and relatively small. Or do you think the two plants can live harmoniously that close together if I'm going to shear the poppy back to 6 inches after bloom and it could even go completely dormant again in the heat of summer (if it ever comes)?