Flowers, Nature, Photography
Southern California Spring Wildflowers
After the rains, Mother Nature is putting on quite a show
After several years of severe drought conditions, Southern California has been deluged by rain this winter. You can almost feel the earth sighing in relief. The reservoirs have re-filled to the point that water has had to be released. And the hillsides, which had been baked to brown, are as emerald green as Ireland or England.
We normally do get a bit of a “wildflower show” here in the spring. But, after the deluges we have had, Mother Nature is putting on a full pageant.
On a recent hike through nearby Peter’s Canyon Regional Park I just couldn’t stop snapping photos of the flowers bursting from the earth. The top photo is of Common Stork’s Bill, a plant which hugs the hillsides and thrives in sandy conditions.
Perhaps my favorites though are the lupine and the California poppy. My first memory of seeing lupine is from Crested Butte, Colorado, a high-elevation mountain town, where the wildflowers explode across the meadows for a brief month or so. So, every time that I see them here, I am a bit surprised that they also grow along the coastline. But they are ubiquitous. And they always bring a smile to my face because they remind me of…
