For a long time, I’ve had a love affair with local wild flowers. In a variety of colors and sizes, they need to be hearty to survive in this sometimes harsh place. I can’t pick a favorite one, but enjoy them all.

In Summer, a bright yellow flower that keeps coming back is coreopsis. Self-sowing, it drops seeds for the following year, and exists mostly on higher ground and ridges.

Here in the town of Waves, I don’t see them as much as I used to. Where there are now subdivisions of beach houses, there were once open fields blanketed with bright flowers, .

Subdivisions at Sea Isle Hills and Bold Dune would eventually be built where this old wooden boat died.

In 1977, the land behind Miss Alethia’s house was thick with gold.

Photographed in 1975, an island homestead in Waves is gone now, but thankfully the coreopsis still comes back.