Curb-side Poppies

Up the road a bit there are poppies growing out of a crack between the curb and an alley driveway.

They look like California poppies, except that they are red instead of the usual orange.

The neighbors aren't sure which is more amazing

• that the flowers are going there in the first place, forcing roots between the matrix of chemistry and stone,
• that no car has run over them, or 
• that no one has come along and picked them.  

I'm pretty sure the metaphor of flowers from a rock has been used on multiple occasions in sermons about faith.   The picking of the forbidden flowers sounds like a folklore motif, and now I need to find  a good on-line FolkLore Index.

The best time of day--okay, it occurs to me that I'm usually not up at dawn, so make that the best waking hours--to photograph them is around sunset.  Which is tricky and early, as they're on a east-facing slope.