When I drove up the last hill on my way to the coast this week, I found that in the last week thousands of wildflowers had bloomed along the roadsides.

As there is little traffic on that particular road, I took my time and drove slowly, looking not only for the spots of color but also for wide spots where I could pull over. Several times I had to hike back a ways to where I’d caught the glimpse. This went on for about an hour, after which I ran out of hill, and made my way down the last slope to the beach, where I saw still more new flowers since my last visit.

There was lots of cow parsnip with manroot crawling all over it, and swaths of yellow capeweed. I saw potentilla, Mules-ears and buttercups. This trifolium dubium below is called Suckling Clover and other common names I’ve never heard of. The flowers are darling, and barely a centimeter across. It’s said to be the traditional Irish shamrock. Unfortunately I didn’t read that until just now, and I didn’t get a good picture of its leaves.

Another wildflower I identified for the first time was the Shepherd’s-needle:

When I pulled into the lot where I most often park, it was empty. Maybe because schools in our area are back in-person, and parents are no longer free to bring the kids to the beach on weekdays. (That’s my car.)

Or maybe because people knew enough to stay away — the wind was up! It was so brisk and blowy, I didn’t walk in the waves but on the dry part of the beach, and found myself headed behind the dunes where I could get them between me and  the worst wind.

I sat with my back against the dune and my feet in the hot sand. This was my view of the lagoon:

It was a perfect reading spot, until the wind shifted and started blowing from my side! That signaled the end of my beach stay, but I sat longer in my car on the bluffs above, to get some more reading time in before my mini-retreat would be over. It had been an unusually dry outing, but oh so satisfyingly full of flowers!