California Poppies

When bright sunbeams dance and play,
The golden poppies nod and swayTheir silken petals by the way;
Closing nightly
Petals tightly
Sweet sleeping till the dawning day.
-Helen M. Carpenter "The Overland", 1894

The field behind our house is a mass of blue lupins. I marched up there this afternoon, determined to lie down on the ground and get some bug's eye pictures, but my attention was arrested by the poppies which have burst into bloom everywhere. Although they grow like weeds when the weather is right, OilMan can't bring himself to pull them, and I can't say I blame him. They are coming up in the middle of the paths as well as in the flowerbeds and brazen hussies that they are  they cannot help but attract attention...especially with the bright blue sky above them. 

Unlike their addictive cousins, you cannot make opium from California poppies. Unlike their European cousins they aren't blood colored and do not grow in battlefields and seem to have no symbolic meaning associated with sleep or death or remembrance. They only thrive in the sun and close up tightly at dusk for the night, so they are mainly associated with sunlight. Because they are wild, they can take over a hillside and turn it into a field of gold. Perhaps that is why they  California, the Golden State, adopted it as its official flower in 1903.

There was a time when the East Bay Hills turned gold with poppies and could clearly be seen from ships passing into the San  Francisco through the strait between San Francisco and Marin County, leading it to be called "the Golden Gate". Now The East Bay hills turn gold from the setting sun reflecting off thousands of windows on houses and buildings scattered throughout the hills.