Waiting for a friend outside a stationery store on Solano Avenue in Albany, California, I amused myself trying to photograph a large pottery street container about half a block away. Spilling out of it were the same curiously spotted scarlet poppies I first spotted about six weeks ago here in a San Francisco front yard.
So I conclude these flowers are, this year, one of the fad-hybrids that sometimes sweep the market (the ultimate example being those execrable "Stargazer" lilies, which came to sudden domination a few years ago by being bigger and splashier and smellier than any possible competition).
Do their breeders make a fortune when this popularity-surge occurs? Perhaps. Probably not. But they must, I suppose, receive a certain satisfaction, like that of fashion designers when they see a person out in the real world wearing an outfit they conceived.
