The summer heat is ramping up and the desert is in bloom. Everywhere I look there are delicate little sexpots clamoring for attention and the impregnation of the next generation. What spectacular gifts reproduction blesses us with.

Let me send you a high resolution signed postcard of this beauty…

It is all but  impossible to describe the new awareness that comes when words are abandoned.  One is transported back, perhaps, to the world of early childhood when everything is fresh and so much of it is wonderful.  Words can enhance experience, but they can also take so much away.  We see an insect and at once we abstract certain characteristics and classify it – a fly.  And in that very cognitive experience, part of the wonder is gone.  Once we have labeled the things around us we do not bother to look at them so carefully.  Words are part of our rational selves, and to abandon them for a while is to give freer reign to our intuitive selves.

- Jane Goodall, from “Reason to Hope”

There it was, screaming at me from across the desert, a brilliant beacon of flaming magenta. Hedgehog cactus, in bloom. Spring is in process. The local brittlebush blossoms have passed their peak in only about 2 days. So fast. The hedgehogs will take a more leisurely stroll through the mating process. Come hither, come hither…

Desert Varnish is a wonderful and strange coating that forms on rocks in the desert from heat, clay, biologic stuff and other magic. Flowers, of course, are flowers, and they seem to show up everywhere, even in the desert. And they are espcially dramatic against the backdrop of dry and seemingly barren. Which may just make them ever more magical and special and more effective as a reminder that life is a gift not to be taken for granted, which of course is what I do most of the time except when I don’t. I hope you don’t some today, too.

If you’d like a beautiful high resolution postcard print, made by me, the photographer, for you, the magical person enjoying this image, just let me know by sending me a donation. I will take great pleasure in personally printing, signing and mailing this bit of my eye off for your pleasure.

- A.

Saguaro blossoms, late May, 2007, Casa Grande, Arizona.

Each season brings a different crop. Some years the blossoms are few and other years they are so thick you can’t believe it. This was an infrared shot and I love the glow. Let me send you a postcard print of this beauty and you won’t have to wait until the desert hits the triple digits to enjoy the beauty.