...so semi-turned off by the poppies that sort of looked planted (seeds scattered), in someone's front yard in Clayton, I thought of a county hiking trail. I'd seen quite a few poppies along it's edge last year.
I headed on over -- fewer poppies, by miles, this year. But still some. Part of the trail has houses on the other side. So I parked in front of a house and walked up the trail and took poppy shots. Then when I was walking back, I spotted a little pot of land planted with cultivated flowers of some kind, and a sign on a tree over it that read, "Roxana's garden." This bordered the poppies that bordered the trail. A woman right near where I parked was raking in her yard, so I went up to her. "Are you Roxana?" Turns out it was her dog. It also turned out, yup, county workers had weed wacked the whole area, cutting down a lot of poppies in among the weeds. But it also turned out, that the poppies I was looking at had been planted by HER!!! (Seeds scattered, still think one can't cultivate CA wildflower poppies). And the poppies I had probably seen the previous year were also seeded by her. She tried to get the county workers not to wack them down, but because she'd seeded them, and they were not natural, I suppose it was not an offense against the state law to not destroy poppies. They were still California poppies, but not, cough, really NATURAL poppies. At this point in time, I am discouraged. No poppy fields, the natural poppies I have found are really mixed in with weeds, and they nice clumps I have found have turned out to be (or likely were) seeded by someone. WHERE ARE THE FIELDS OF NATURAL CALIFORNIA POPPIES? The fields of yesteryear??? Even THE CLUMPS OF YESTERYEAR? Sniff. Sniff. However, image-wise, this was getting closer to what I want... http://members.aol.com/eactivist/POPPIES/pages/poppy4.htm But I think it's a little too cut off on the left. And, frank, Peter, does this look too soft too? The great poppy hunt goes on... searching for the wild poppy in its natural wild habitat... Marnie aka Doe ;-)
