Schedule Iphone Silent

Gentil Poppy? A head full well

Loire Valley - June 2009
Photos: Renaud Bouret

"There are places where it is so common that by far the wheat appear to be covered with a carpet scarlet shine that 'they think, when the sun is shining, can not be described. When the poppy

shows itself in small quantities in the fields, it is not harmful, because he is dried before the harvest, and its seed is never in wheat was winnowed and screened, but when inside with plenty quoted above, necessarily preclude the growth of wheat and other cereals. " (Abbe Francois Rozier, New complete course of theoretical and practical agriculture, Deterville Publisher, Paris, 1809)

What some consider a weed can become an exotic plant or object for poetic others.

In Carthage, we folded the petals of the poppy down and were tied with a piece of stem, to form the silhouette of a ballerina tutu in red. Poppies became then Misses .

Poppy buttons were also used to a board game popular until the invention of misguided Game Boy . The game was to guess the color of the petals enclosed in the bud. The referee of the game featured a button poppy assistance and asked the ritual question: "Rooster, Poulou, chicken? . When players had indicated their choice, the arbitrator was tearing the sheath of the button and the petals were spread as if by magic, sometimes red (bantam), sometimes pink (Poulou) and sometimes white (chicken).

It was asked many questions about the nature of the famous

Poulou , whose sound is accorded so well with the symbolism of color. Language of scholarly research have allowed us to trace the etymology of the word, the result of slippage of the tonic accent (not uncommon in some phrases of spoken French at Carthage). The original expression, which is lost in the mists of time, was in reality: "Rooster, hen or chicken? .

The poppy thrives in plowed fields, like what this protégé of homo poeticus

would not be much without the work of homo

agricolus (as they say in latin cooking).