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Urban gold

I’ve been seeing random shocks of gold in my neighborhood over the last couple weeks, the annual eruption of the California state flower, the golden poppy.

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Poppies are seasonal things in these parts. They bloom in springtime—in great abundance if it has been a wet winter. But this has been a particularly dry winter. We’ve had about five inches of rain, roughly a third of our annual average.

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The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, where the rolling hills often look like they’re carpeted in gold, is reporting a disappointing bloom.

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And yet, there are random pockets of orange in several places in my neighborhood, including this one where the poppies just popped up amid what could politely be called unkempt landscaping.

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It was too good not to stop and snap off a couple of shots.

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