The rains came too late this year for a repeat of last year’s wildflower performance in Southern California. Nonetheless, with the help of desertusa.com, we tracked down a thick patch of poppies and other flowers in Lancaster, just a little north of the Poppy Preserve.

I headed out Saturday afternoon with A2, Caroline, and Sachin (both of whose names I’ve most likely just misspelled). The drive up was green at first, but by the time we passed the aqueduct and headed into Santa Clarita it was just brown, brown, brown. It was hard to believe anyone had reported good wildflower photography anywhere in the area, and it still looked brown as we exited the freeway and drove past the Poppy Preserve. The hills that were covered with orange and yellow last year were brown. The sides of the road where we found all sorts of blues, purples, and random patches of poppies? Brown.

But when we passed the Poppy Preserve to the west and turned north, we saw it: a splotch of yellow and orange in the distance that was shockingly bright next to all the brown around it. We headed over dirt roads and around mud puddles, attempting to follow the vague directions from the website, and finally discovered this:

I spent a lot of time crawling around on the ground trying to find good angles to shoot from, and waiting for the wind to pause for a split second. I decided I might as well get a cute picture of me out of all that wriggling around in dirt, so I pestered A2 to come snap a few shots.

A little further to the south, we found a fun convergence of joshua trees and wildflowers.

The rest of my pics are here.