Alien Invader

This is the product of Friday's power cut - went gardening and pulled out a number of these beautiful plants. They are quite charming - the twisty green tendrils winding up trees and through shrubs and up the bamboo candle holder. The fleshy magenta-tipped white blossoms, which turn into delicately spiked green lanterns, which burst, releasing gazillions of pretty fairy-light puffballs, which float and dance delightfully into the breeze... and take over and strangle your garden, and your suburb, and your bushveld and your COUNTRY... how evil is that!?
I have been trying to find out what it's called - common or any other name, and where it originates from and had no luck. (But we had a visitor here once who said we could get arrested for harbouring this intruder!)
Does anyone know? Botanical sister? It has milky sticky sap and the leaves are oval with a little point at the ends.

Watching poppies grow

Here are two very satisfying pages from my journal - not so much the drawings, but the fact that I actually planted the seedlings, which I don't always get around to, and they came up so magnificently. I've had poppies in my house for three weeks now, with new buds forming constantly. These should remind me to keep on sowing and reaping - the rewards are great! The Easter eggs are still hanging around my middle, and my son's shoes lying on the sitting room floor, provoking housewifely grumbles, will maybe one day bring waves of nostalgia for the good old days.