Many years ago, when I lived in California, I was walking down the street with a friend, an old Italian-Catholic grandmotherly woman who I knew through her work fighting against the construction of a freeway through our town.

I was sharing my fascination with these tenacious little juvenile palm trees that had found a niche in the gravel beds along the railroad tracks that ran through town.

“The life force is strong, John,” she said in response, with a smile of religious wisdom.

Here’s some poppies from last spring, doing what they do:

the life force, strongly