Disturbed Earth: Sweet and Piquant

The apple orchards on Calabasas road are blooming -- not the trees, the ground: acid yellow sourgrass and bright yellow mustard. The mustard is the same mustard as you buy in the jar in the store (that is to say the mustard is several of the same species -- there's pages and pages of them in Jepson alone). Roadsides are blooming in honey-scented alyssum and ceanothus.
The garden writer in the Sentinel today called ceanothus "the queen of disturbed earth." Wherever there's a fire or a landslide, ceanothus is one of the pioneering plants, and it serves the land well: its roots prevent further erosion, and there's some indication they also fix nitrogen. It acts as a nursery for trees (as does poison oak, another member of the disturbed earth oligarchy).
Disturbed earth is what we are in California. We are the mustard, immigrant and feeling native, bright and piquant and pushy, urban and rural without distinction.

Okay, that's kind of pretentious. Oh well.