LIVING IN FRANCE
Seeing Red Isn’t Necessarily A Bad Thing
Les Coquelicots by any other name — a source of joy and inspiration. Just don’t take them home.
It’s mid-April and the village is ablaze with poppies. Since it’s a French village, I should say coquelicots but poppies is easier to say. Just as frog is far easier to say than grenouille. And why struggle with feuille when you simply mean leaf? The answer, I suppose is when in France do — or say — as the French do.
But why coquelicot? Rooster is coq in the French and the scarlet flower was likened to to a rooster’s red comb. So there you have it.
Poppies begin to pop up sometime in mid-April — although it seems to get a little earlier every year. At first, just one or two at the edge of a field, then more and more until the fields are a blanket of scarlet.
Of all the wild spring flowers, poppies are my favourite. I love the contrast between their bold, assertive colour and the fragility of their tissue-like petals that tremble in the breeze. Poppies, I’ve discovered, prefer to be left alone.
