An Area Man Finds Himself in Oz After A Floral Mishap
In which Mike spends too much time with his poppies.
Suquamish, WA - 5 Jul 2025
The fifth of July. The day after the fourth and I can put my little PTSD angst aside for a while. Fireworks for me aren't as much fun as they used to be. Now I run and hide from them and the fun memories I used to enjoy have been replaced with something more vicious. I'll leave it at that.
But today is a new day and that pain is suppressed for the time being. I was out in my yard and I was greeted by my favorite flower. The poppy. I don't know what it is about poppies, but I am attracted to them. We have wild ones all over the place up here in my little paradise, small blossoms of red and orange. sometimes I will see a giant specimen in someone's yard. Huge blossoms as big as lemons in deep indigos that variegate to brilliant crimson borders. when they open I am greeted with a green and yellow eye that looks for and calls the bees to hurry and do their job before the petals fall.
In my yard I have my own poppy. It isn't a brazen show off like some i have seen. Mine is more temperate, the size of a plum. A magenta plume with an indigo base and a green eye. They amaze me. One second the plant is barren, a mass of drab green stems. And, in an instant a sleeping head like that of a dragon rises, bursts open to reveal its brilliantly hued robes and then once it gets my attention, and that of the bees too, it drops it's robes and goes to sleep in a sphere sporting a green crown.
Those pods are packed with the familiar little black specs that often find their way to the pastry shops, but at my house they will dry up and burst flinging those little seeds all over the yard with a promise of a new crop for the following year.
If I play my cards right I will have a field of poppies like the ones nestled up to the yellow brick road leading to OZ. I must be wary to not spend too much time there least I fall into a deep coma.
Would that really be so bad?
-M-
Suquamish, WA - 6 Jul 2025
An Area Man Finds Himself in Oz After A Floral Mishap
Suquamish gardener, Mel Thorpe, found himself transported to another dimension on Thursday after bringing home an enchanted poppy.
Mel was found sitting in the county emergency room rocking and mumbling in a chair of the waiting room. One of the nurses found him there and tried to give him assistance. Nancy Latimer approached Mel when nervous patients in the ER waiting room complained of a strange man sitting nearby and apparently speaking in tongues. Nancy told reporters she wanted to help Mel and get him to safety before malicious gossip caused a county wide upheaval that might affect hospital funding.
"I found him in the back of the waiting room," Nancy told reporters. He seemed okay, but had something on his mind. He wanted to be put in a safe place away from all the flying monkeys."
Doctors, concerned with Mel's safety and well being took him to a private area and administered heavy doses of thorazine, haloperidol and electroshock treatments to him until he snapped out of it and came to his senses.
Mell told us that he remembers his wife giving him a potted poppy plant that she said she got at the farmer's market. She bought it because the vender told her it was enchanted and had magical properties that would make their yard more beautiful. Since the Thorps were under heavy scrutiny from the HOA, she thought the magical beautification would help put the angry HOA president at ease and he would lay off them once and for all.
"It was so odd,” Mel’s wife told us, “No sooner had the plant gone into the garden it suddenly grew a foot tall and started to bud. The buds turned to flowers and then flung seeds all over the yard. Before we knew what happened the entire lawn was covered in poppies, growing and spreading all over the place. The main street in front of the house was soon paved in yellow bricks. I didn't know what was going on and then I saw Mel running into the poppy field ranting something about flying monkeys. I haven't seen or heard from him until now, when the ER nurse called me."
Mel told us that a monkey snatched him up and took him to some place called Oz where the inhabitants were only three feet tall and the town was run by a couple of psychotic witches. The governor, some guy called Wizard, came to see Mel and immediately transported him back home. He woke up in the ER where doctors and staff drugged him and attached an AED to his head repeatedly zapping him until he calmed down. He also said the poppies were amazing and he is going to go to the farmer's market to see if he can score some more. "Best trip I ever had," said Mel.
Keep on truckin'
-Mike
