Desert Flowers

Psalm 111:2

New International Version (NIV)

² Great are the works of the Lord;
    they are pondered by all who delight in them.

This has been the driest year on record for us. We had a few sporadic excuses for rain over the last few months but not enough to make the desert blossom like it can in a rainy year. Then about three weeks ago we had a weekend of rain. It rained slowly, so almost everything soaked into the dry earth.

Two days ago I put Cleo on leash and we took an hour walk into the hills that surround our home. They’re a welcome and refreshing color of green. Once in the desert I let Cleo run where ever she wanted to. She looks for anything to chase, and those are few and many days in between this year. But she loves looking.

As we stepped out into the desert I was able to look around my feet. I counted six different flowering plants there, all small and easily overlooked like the delicate purple filaree. Already the little lances, that we called “clocks” as kids, were pointing skyward. I know it’s an unwelcome import, but it is still a tiny breath of color in the desolate desert.

A little further on is the tall, slender plant with trumpet shaped yellow flowers that some locals call desert wild tobacco plant. It is one of the few plants that seem capable of flowering all through the hottest, driest part of the year. Another is what we call the desert buckwheat which has pleasant bundles of tiny white flowers edged in pink.

Further along the usually dead looking brittle bush was now very showy with hundreds of large daisy like blossoms. As you look closely at these, some plants have gray, almost silver leaves and blossoms of bright yellow with yellow centers; others have more greenish leaves with the same bright yellow blossoms, only their centers are black.

Suddenly in an area covered with dry, dead grass, I came across the delightfully and humorously named blue dicks. They’re a small lily with dark blue flowers that become pinkish as they grow older. These are special because they don’t grow some years. And then up against the rocks I spied peachy-yellow sticky monkey flowers. Try to pick them, and you’ll see where it got the sticky part of its name.

On El Niño years, the hills can be a riot of colors. This year we have to look closely for any flowers. By the time we got back home, we had counted 22 different flowers.

Thank You, Lord, that even here in the harsh desert You nurture beauty to delight us. In the same way nurture our souls in this soul desert of numbing materialism.

Filaree

Wild Tobacco

Desert Buckwheat

Gray Brittle Bush

Green Brittle Bush 

Blue Dick

Yellow Sticky Monkey Flower