Walk with me during this spring that has had enough rain to bring forth an abundance of wildflowers.

You’ve probably seen articles with professional pictures on this in the NYT and other media, including reports on some California communities limiting access to their natural wonders, for good reasons. People flock to the bloom and trample it in search for the perfect photo, destroying wildflower and wildlife habitat in due course. Yours’ truly no exception.

Some carefully controlled areas and parks are open, however, and here are some of the views from the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve this week.

Lots of fiddlenecks. This year’s extra water has spurred growth of brome grasses and fiddlenecks, which can block out the light for the poppies.

To get to the reserve and adjacent private fields you drive through the San Gabriel Mountains if you start out from Altadena. For me, the bloom on those hills was equally if not more spectacular than the poppies, because less saturated blossoms still color the landscape. At the foothills there are patches of goldfields,

Whole swaths of mustard,

and unknown blue flowers, next to patches of lupines.

For me the most heart stopping view of the entire day was the emergence, once out of the clouds hanging over the top of the San Gabriels, of whole mountain sides covered in blooming blue ceanothus. There is a fairy tale quality to the silver sheen of the light against those blue blossoms, a softness that contrasts with the hard rocks of the canyons. Captured only through the car windows, with an iPhone since my camera, in typically timely fashion, had given up its ghost (as the last repair man had warned me – time for a replacement.)

Earlier the aromatic white ceanothus blossoms cover hillsides, sometimes called “mountain snow.” Native Americans used the blue ceanothus that is on view now, as digging tools and the harder wood as wedges to split logs for canoe planks and awls. Come closer, and you’ll detect a faint lilac smell that is suffusing the air. I was in awe. And didn’t think about politics for a whole day. Nature scored again.

Where we belong. So says even the music…