Ranunculus????

During my painting class the instructor mentioned this place south of Los Angeles where there are fields of flowers... so of course, I had to figure out where and when was the best time to view. Well, I figured out that about an hour and a half south of where I live is a place called "The Flower Fields", which is over 50 acres of Giant Tecolote Ranunculus, which can be viewed in early spring.

So I left fairly early on Saturday morning (Apr 28) and took the I-5 south. Drive went fairly smoothly - not a lot of traffic and got to the fields in about an hour and a half. It was pretty amazing to see the rows of colors...

The flowers belong to the buttercup family and feature a variety of shapes - some with tightly packed petals and others open, with only a few petals.

Besides the fields they had a hot house full of different varieties of poinsiettas - who knew there were so many.

There was a rose garden...

and a sweet pea maze

And then after many more photos, and a stop at the nearby outlet malls I headed north following the coast where I could.

And the hour and a half drive south turned into excess of 3 hours when heading north (until I got tired and headed back onto the free way for another hour of driving).