California Wild

After visiting California from early to mid-March, I was inspired to do a design of some of the flowers that were blooming as if it were already spring. Some of them looked like they belonged in a Dr. Seuss book, brightly colored and crazily shaped. Everywhere I looked there was something blooming: wild, cultivated, half-wild, and even some outlaws.

I put them all together in an imaginary garden. I’ll start at the top left corner of the design, and move clockwise. (This is a detail; for the full image, please see the Designs page.) 

There were flowering trees from Los Angeles to Napa Valley: loads of cherry blossoms in the Chinese and Japanese Gardens at the Huntington Library, cherry and/or plum blossoms lining the streets of Yountville, and small forests of pink haze from almond trees growing along I-5. Fallen petals underneath the trees made it look like a small snowstorm had passed through. 

Pink cherry blossoms in the Japanese Garden at the Huntington Library.

Night-blooming jasmine would fill the air after the sun went down in Los Angeles. While driving in the car at night, all of a sudden the smell of nectar would come through the air vents.  

We (and several bees) were admiring the powder puff plant outside Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles. The flowers look like Koosh balls. 

The prettiest of fireworks can't compete with this.

Bright orange California poppies were growing along the roadsides and hillsides of the Pacific Coast Highway. 

I saw flowering quince in Napa Valley. Its ruddy blooms stand out against its stark branches.  

Yellow oxalis covered green fields by the Pacific coast. This is considered an invasive plant in California. 

Oxalis in the foreground; Pigeon Point Lighthouse in the background. 

Exotic camellias, especially pink ones, were well stocked on the grounds of the Huntington, at Hearst Castle, and all over Napa Valley. The flowers will fall off the shrubs perfectly intact. Some of them look like Spirograph drawings, each petal perfectly in place with a mathematical symmetry. 

I found this camellia on the ground at Hearst Castle.