With all the rain they’ve had in southern California this winter, I would expect the poppy season to be gorgeous up in Lancaster. This is a good harbinger of that:

Overlooking the first poppy at the reserve would have been easy. The stem was only a couple of inches high and wind gusts bent the young flower almost sideways. The flower was just off the exit road beyond the park’s kiosk.

“I hope it’s a sign of a good bloom that’s coming,” Scott said after she learned of the sighting.

Elgin said she hopes to pass on poppy updates to enthusiasts who phone the information center.

“I figure in the next couple of days there will be five or six more poppies show up, and each day a few more until the full bloom,” Elgin said.

“There’s indications we’ll have a decent season, but I can’t really predict one that will be exceptionally good because Mother Nature can turn right around and prove me wrong.”

Elgin said the only thing predictable about poppies at the reserve is that they’re unpredictable.

I’m going to Space Access in about three weeks, in Phoenix. When I was looking for tickets, it turned out to make a lot more sense to fly into LA, for schedule and ticket price, and I have other business there anyway, so I’m going to fly out, drive to Phoenix and back, and then fly back to Florida. But I’ll probably be going up to Mojave, so I think I’ll take a still and videocam with me, and make the little side trip in Lancaster to the preserve. And hope that it’s both sunny and not windy (an intersection of conditions that’s unfortunately rare that time of year), because that’s the only time that the flowers are really open and in full bloom.