About the Photo

I change the photos at the beginning of the blog from time to time. I’ve chosen them to remind myself that the world is larger than ritual abuse and is filled with serenity and beauty.

Here are California poppies, beautiful, hardy perenial wildflowers that self-seed freely but act like annuals in my garden. And forget growing them from seed! Never seen a single one germinate.

I love how they look massed in a field. I love how they happily grow, bathed in pollution, in the strip between lanes of traffic. I love a single plant showing  all phases of bloom — buds, half-open blossoms, flowers in full bloom, flowers with all the petals except one fallen to the ground, and last in the squence, a long light green seed pod that bursts and scatterd its contents for thwe next generation. And they last a long time on the kitchen window sill, opening with day light and closing for the night.

The wild California poppy is orange but has been bred to yield yellow, rose, pale ivory, and white varieties. I think there are even bicolor ones. They aren’t as hardy and aren’t as beautiful, to my eyes, as the orange ones. But if the original orange ones didn’t exist, they would each be exquisite.