A Bit More on Yellow Flowers

Those yellow flowers from last Sunday remain a mystery as far as identification is concerned. I had the fortune to be riding down the hill with my dad this morning, and pointed them out. He nodded, "Oh, rattlesnake bush." Well, that is a name, but it turns out, it is Dad's own name for them; when he was a child, he and his brothers were out somewhere in the hills with his dad, and they heard a sudden ominous rattling over a rise ahead. The foothills down near Bakersfield are rattlesnake country, so if any such sound should cause worry, it is quite a legitimate one. However, on this occasion, when Grandpa scouted ahead, he found nothing more alarming than one of those bushes, its seed pods rattling in the wind.