Until last week, there was a small plant in our back garden that looked like a bunch of weeds I’d forgotten to pull up….
I’m so glad I didn’t, because it suddenly sprouted forth the most amazingly radiant golden-yellow flowers, which have completely transformed that corner of our garden. Look here!
And every evening, when the sun disappears behind our neighbours’ house and the shadows fall on our garden, every single golden flowerhead closes up tightly for the night.
It’s almost as though each flower has drunk its fill of the golden summer sunshine, and is now returning all this joyous, cheerful energy to the earth, to nourish it and to give thanks for the sustenance it has given.
By mid-morning the next day, the shadows from the large tree have slowly retreated across the lawn, the sun is once again shining directly on the little plant, and one by one, its flowers open up yet again to receive the blessings of the sun.
Just looking at them is making my heart sing.
P.S. I have just found out that these are Californian Poppies (Eschscholzia californica).
Grains of Sand 
Gorgeous flowers ! Do you know what they are ?
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Hi Panda – welcome to my blog and thank you for leaving a comment. 🙂
I had a look through my garden books, and just found out that these are Californian Poppies (Eschscholzia californica). They’re really prety!
What a wonderful surprise treasure. I am glad that you did not pull them up as well.
Yeh, sometimes it’s good to leave ‘weeds’ in! Over the last few years, I’ve scattered so many seed packets of various kinds of seasonal flowers around the garden – most of which have never made it all the way to flowering, though I don’t know why not. And I’ve dug in a fair number of bulbs too, very few of which have ‘made it’. Perhaps it’s the moles who eat the bulbs and seeds, or perhaps there’s other worms hiding below the surface. And I’ve often seen the birds pulling out the small just-sprouted seedlings, so it’s always a huge surprise and actually a MIRACLE, when SOMETHING survives into the actual flower stage!
That is the most beautiful flower. What a rich color! Hard to imagine flowers blooming right now… 🙂
I guess that’s the advantage of living on opposite hemispheres – when we’re shivering with cold down here in the south, you post stunning photos of flowers and budding trees in the north, and vice versa. I just love the rich COLOUR of those Californian poppies.