POPPY FIELDS NOT AS PICTURESQUE : FESTIVAL ORGANIZERS HOPE EVENT PROVIDES PLENTY OF PIZAZZ.Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Daily News Staff Writer The emphasis this year is on the festival, not the poppies. Lancaster's fifth annual Poppy Festival is coming up this weekend, but the wildflowers aren't cooperating. At the 1,700-acre Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve is a California wildlife reserve located in the rural westside of the Antelope Valley in northern Los Angeles County. Constitutionally, it is a state park. Its namesake is the state flower, the California Poppy. west of Lancaster, bright orange poppies have bloomed in a few patches in front of the visitors center, and other poppies, filaree, fiddlenecks and goldfields n. 1. A small slender woolly annual (Lasthenia chrysostoma) with very narrow opposite leaves and branches bearing solitary golden-yellow flower heads; it grows from Southwestern Oregon to Baja California and Arizona; - it is often cultivated. are scattered elsewhere among the grass. But the general color of the rolling hills Rolling hills are like a mountain chain, only a "hill chain" of hills that roll on and on continually. You will often find them in between plains and mountains, near major rivers, or randomly anywhere. The only places without rolling hills are deserts and flood plains. is a dull brown - not the variegated variegated adjective Multifaceted; with many colors, aspects, features, etc oranges, yellows and blues of last year's unusually long wildflower wildflower Any flowering plant that grows without intentional human aid. Wildflowers are the source of all cultivated garden varieties of flowers. A wildflower growing where it is unwanted is considered a weed. season, nor the brilliant orange hillsides of 1991's fantastic show. ``We've started warning people that this is not going to be the year,'' supervising ranger Craig Mattson said last week out at the poppy reserve. ``We're telling everybody about the festival. You can still have fun over there.'' The festival will run Saturday and Sunday at Lancaster City Park, on 10th Street West at Avenue K-8. Admission is $2 for adults and $1 for senior citizens and children under 12. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. The festival will include more than 250 arts and crafts arts and crafts, term for that general field of applied design in which hand fabrication is dominant. The term was coined in England in the late 19th cent. as a label for the then-current movement directed toward the revivifying of the decorative arts. and fine-arts booths with handcrafted hand·craft n. Variant of handicraft. tr.v. hand·craft·ed, hand·craft·ing, hand·crafts To fashion or make by hand. hand·craft items, more than 40 food vendors, and a carnival and entertainment for children. Children can enjoy carnival games
Carnival Games is a video game for Nintendo's Wii console. It is published by Global Star Software, which is a division of Take-Two Interactive. , small rides, clowns, a craft corner and a sidewalk art drawing contest. Older visitors can enjoy a flower market, environmental displays, the wildflower photo contest, and an exhibit of 35 wildflower paintings by Jane Pinehiro, who worked to create the poppy reserve. Last year's festival drew an estimated 65,000 visitors and helped boost the poppy reserve's visitor count to a record. Saturday's musical highlight will be Starship with Mickey Thomas There are several people named Mickey Thomas:
Other entertainment will go on throughout both days, including jazz, blue grass and gospel music groups, dancers and clowns, magicians and puppets in the children's area. Five-kilometer and 10-kilometer runs will start at 7:30 a.m. Sunday at Avenue K-8 and 10th Street West. A 20-mile bicycle race - the Tour de Poppy - will start at 6:30 a.m. Saturday. Entry fee for either race is $20. Festival visitors have a choice of ways to see what poppies there are. Free shuttle bus rides are available from the park to the reserve; helicopter flights are $35 a person; and hot-air balloon rides are $125. Hot-air balloon rides depart at 6:30 a.m. To reserve a helicopter ride or balloon ride, call (805) 723-6077. The problem with the flowers this spring was rain, or rather lack of it. Average annual rainfall at the reserve is about 10 inches, but this year only about six inches of rain - and precipitation as snow - has fallen since July, Mattson said. In addition, the valley's winter has been mild; though snow has fallen, the temperatures never dropped as low as in the ``arctic express'' that blasted through Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, three months before the 1991 wildflower season. Some botanists, Mattson said, believe that a hard freeze is necessary to force the poppies to sprout and bloom. When the reserve opened last month, rangers had been telling visitors that they hoped the blooms would peak in mid-April, coinciding with the city's festival. But Mattson said the blossoms began thinning out last week, so the season might have peaked already. ``It's just not a good year,'' Mattson said. CAPTION(S): 3 Photos Photo: (1--color in AV only) Stanley Fong of Los Angeles focuses on a flower at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. Rangers said this is not a good year for poppies. (2--color in AV only) Fewer wildflowers have bloomed at the poppy reserve than in the past. (3--ran in AV edition only) Brothers Kevin, left, and Tom Dinsmore of Pasadena walk along a poppy-lined trail at the California Poppy California poppy: see poppy. California poppy Annual garden plant (Eschscholzia californica) in the poppy family, native to the western coast of North America and naturalized in parts of southern Europe, Asia, and Australia. Reserve west of Lancaster. Jeff Goldwater/Daily News |
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