In the past few months I’ve found myself stopping to take flower pictures on my daily walk. When I got here it was difficult to walk across the street, so I push myself every day up the hill to the store and back. I now take the same walk that used to be on and off patches of sidewalk all the way to the store on continuous sidewalk. They’ve been working on it for the last few weeks and it’s almost finished. We’re starting to be what some complain looks a lot like a middle class neighborhood. One of the houses had an enormous display of California poppies growing between an old patch of sidewalk and the fence. And then there was nothing. My heart sank. The owner of the house was just cleaning up as I passed. He saw the shock on my face. “I do this every year,” he said. “First I knock all the seeds on the sidewalk and sweep them up. Then I cut down the old poppy plants, amend the soil, and sprinkle back all the seeds.” Someone taught him to do that years ago, and now it’s like giving the yard a haircut.

Poppies, of course, are weeds. But some of the most beautiful weeds in California. They’ll be back.