Friday, May 20, 2011

Poppies remind me of California ...

About this time of the year, the golden-orange colors of the California poppies bring to energetic life the Grapevine stretch over the hills between Bakersfield and Sen Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.

Often I have stopped while driving across to admire them.  I am sure my daughter remembers stopping by Gorman at least a few times to pick some of those flowers, all the while worrying that a cop or a ranger will issue us a cease and desist order.  The poppies made the warm--sometimes uncomfortably warm--drive a lot more pleasant.  No wonder Christo did that wonderful poppy-colored umbrella project.

Here in Oregon, poppies are in bloom, even by the Willamette River that I walk by practically everyday now that the cold, cold and rainy, rainy days are long gone.  There are all kinds of wildflowers displaying their beauty, attracting the bees and the humans alike.  But, it is always the poppies that draw me closer to them.  Because, ... I have stories that link me to them.  To their California cousins.    Doesn't it look like a line of poppies are meandering through on their way to California? Run, Forrest, run :)

I could watch those flowers for hours, I think, if Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" played in an extended jam session in the background :)

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