Home this spring

Scarcely a breath of wind with the giant mills in the distance facing west and slowly revolving. It is almost 100, 98 to be exact... but it is a dry heat!... only 4% humidity, a hell of a lot cooler than Phoenix... and kinda nice if you don't move around too much... there is a breeze of soft fluffy air about you.

A cottontail bunny, braving the lowering sun has ventured out to help mow our contrived lawn which we installed several years ago to combat the idea living exclusively in a desert. ...and a mourning dove has just lit upon the plastic frog in the center of the K-mart special ceramic bird bath at the edge of the lawn. It hops down to the rim and repeatedly dunks its head into the warm water, only slightly disturbed by the red breasted house finch who decides a sip of water would be good and dips his head into the same honey bee infested waters. Neither seem concerned by the caws of a nearby crow.

It has been a beautiful spring here in the desert with the smaller cacti blossoming first with their red flowers while myriads of well-documented and listed flowers of desert weeds show off their blue, yellow, white, and orange dainty flowers to be pollinated by anything interested in their bounty. They all seem to take turns as we find the big guys like the joshuas with their large white conical clusters, and the smaller bright red clusters at the tips of the “coachwhip” ocatillo, and, of course, the white flowers which blossom much later in clusters about the top of the giant sugarros. We have only one of those who is too young to have an arm, yet.

By now, the hummingbirds have returned from South America flying up the Colorado River to visit the southwestern desert for the season. They especially love the ocatillos while they await the blooming of the Mexican birds of paradise bushes which regrow from their roots in this climate. They grow aggressively from the ground to about six feet high into large bushes which are abundantly flowered with beautiful blossoms throughout the summer season. Quite often a hummer will hover before our faces while it quizzically decides why we’re there watching it. Finally it feeds on the obviously wonderful nectar of the “BOP” and pays us no mind.

Not to forego our foreign interests, we have planted on our acre, five pine trees of different persuasions, a desert willow with its purple flowers, a weeping willow and two catalpas which are small bushy trees which thrive in arid locations and are covered with delicate whitish/purple flowers all season long. 

All in all, we have a paradise which relies on the native wonders of the desert with its many critters and birds and yet introduced a broader spectrum of plants which seem to thrive with just a bit of water.

When you add to our local splendor, the view at the base of our eight thousand foot high Hualapai mountains and can view the city of Kingman below along with the Cerbats across the valley... What better can it get?