California Poppy Week

 

Last week was California Poppy Week (every year from May 13 to May 18 since 1996), and April 6 is California Poppy Day. The California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is the state flower of our beautiful state. Both California Poppy Day and California Poppy Week promote responsible bahaviour toward our natural resources and a spirit of protection toward them as well as emphasize the value and conservation of natural resources.

The first five photos in this post were taken in March 2019 during the superbloom. At that time we hadn't had a superbloom for years because of the ongoing drought, but the winter of 2018/2019 had gifted us with a good amount of rain. During spring break the Geek and I drove down to Southern California where we experienced the superbloom in Walker Canyon near Lake Elsinore. You can see more pictures and read about our day among the poppies here.

I still remember that day with a big smile on my face. À propos smile - if there is a wildflower that makes me smile it certainly is the California Poppy. It is such a happy flower, and seeing it turning the hills orange is like looking at a beautiful impressionist painting.

However, most years we don't have a superbloom, but the orange dots in the landscape are still lighting up the scenery. Years ago I took this picture in one of our regional parks - isn't it a beautiful sight?

In the wild, California Poppies have all kinds of yellow-orange shades. At the coast they tend to be more yellow with an orange center, while the "true" California Poppy (if you can even say that) features a warm brilliant orange. There are also differently colored California Poppies, however, they don't exist in the wild.

I like the pink ones and have a few of them in the garden.

This pale yellow one turned up in my garden one day and has reseeded every since.

Another favorite is the "Copper Pot".

The earliest I saw a California Poppy bloom was in February. Usually they are in full bloom March to May or June and then start to develop seeds. The seeds are tiny and the plants readily reseed. Once you have them, you usually have them forever. They look lovely shortly before the blooms completely mature to their beauty.

Don't they look like they're wearing hats?

When I started my garden here 13 years ago I put out a good number of seeds just to get it going (I was converting the lawn using the sheet mulching method and couldn't plant a lot in the first year except spreading some seed). Of course not all of the seeds made it to flowers, but many did and years later my front garden looked like this:

I eventually pulled many plants before the development of seeds and by now I have them in smaller drifts which I prefer. These days in May and June, the red poppies are taking over the front garden (pictures will follow in a later post).

I hope this beautiful flower made you smile! Finally, a photo I took when I was driving back from Davis after dropping off my daughter at college, and this one has become my favorite photo I ever took of them. I used this photo to make greeting cards and three of them I want to give to three of my readers. Please let me know in the comments if you'd like one, and if there are more than three people who want a card, I have to roll the dice to decide who will be the lucky ones. Yes, I will also send to Australia or Germany or Canada or...

The Blooming Desert

After the spectacular superbloom in Walker Canyon we proceeded to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. This park is always worth a visit in the spring when the desert comes to life after the winter rains. Since we had so much rain this year the bloom in the desert was stunning, however, not quite as bright and "happy colored" as in Walker Canyon (you really can't beat a California poppy in that). Anza-Borrego is a very different landscape, rocky and barren - a hot hot desert in the summer.

But spring is the time to be here - it's warm, but not unbearable. Actually a really nice change after the rainy, grey and rather chilly days.

The dominant colors were purple - lots of phacelia here - yellow, white and pink.

The Red Barrel Cactus had blooms and so had the Silver Cholla.

We saw a lot of old wood decaying on the ground with new growth around it. It was like seeing the circle of life in one place.

The Ocotillo stands out because it's taller than all the other plants and birds often like to land on it. When it's blooming the orioles (and probably other birds) like to feed from its nectar.

Deserts are interesting and unique landscapes since they're all different. I'm not quite sure what attracts me to them, but they sure are places I enjoy tremendously.

The California Superbloom

Last week we returned from a short road trip through Southern California into Arizona. It was spring break for me; both the Geek and I were more than ready for a change of scenery.

We left right after I came home from teaching at the German School and made it to Monterey where we stayed the night. While driving down stunning Highway 1 along the California coast we realized that this was the first sunny weekend we had in weeks and everybody was out and about.

One of our destinations was Walker Canyon in Lake Elsinore, Southeast of Los Angeles, where the superbloom after all this rain was said to be spectacular. But we were getting second thoughts whether it was such a brilliant idea to go there on a Sunday afternoon - we were pretty sure more people would have the same idea. Instead, we booked a hotel in Lake Elsinore, arrived there when it was already dark and walked into Walker Canyon first thing the following morning.

Good thing we did! We heard that on that Sunday about 50,000 people tried to get to Walker Canyon and caused complete chaos - it actually made it into the national news! The trailhead in Walker Canyon is right next to the Interstate, and at some point they even had to close the exit ramps because the chaos was just too much and out of control.

However, when we arrived early on Monday morning there was still ample parking. It was already busy, but far from the chaos of the weekend before. We walked up the trail and were speechless when we saw the blooming hills - a brilliant display of green, purple and LOTS of orange.

It was spectacular.

So early in the morning the California poppies - the source of the orange - hadn't opened yet, but the higher the sun rose in the sky and it became warmer the flowers opened up and the orange color became even more intense. It was an incredibly beautiful display of nature's endless treasures.

If only people respected and treated her more responsibly.