June Wildflowers, Plus Some Roots!

At the end of May (it almost counts as June), I caught a nice angle on the Arizona State Flower growing in the neighbor’s yard:

May Wildflowers

May and June are the harshest time here in the Sonoran desert. The temperature reaches 100° by mid-May and mostly stays there all through June. The days are clear and sunny and dry. Nothing was moving out there during the day, except me and the camera, looking for anything blooming. There wasn’t much to find.

In May, the hesperaloes put up stalks of flowers.

April Wildflowers

In April, things start to dry out quite a bit, and heat up, so we stop getting the variety of flowers that we get in the early spring. Mostly it’s time for the cacti to show off.

This one is a Pinkflower Hedgehog Cactus (Echinocereus fasciculatus):

Not-So-Wild Flowers from March

I live in what we call a “semi-rural” neighborhood. The roads are all dirt, and it’s very hilly, and cellphone service is still pretty iffy. But we do have our standards, y’know, and most of the houses here have at least some area around them that has been graded flat(-ish) and xeriscaped. Well, OK, my house had a little patch of grass in the backyard, but that’s all over now. The Google satellite photographs don’t show much lawn-type grass for miles around.

The “cultivated” plantings around the house also bloomed in March, and I thought I’d show those too.

I have two or three Paloverde trees that were probably planted on purpose near the house. There may be one or two more in the wilder part of the yard, but they’re less tree-like and more resemble loose, scruffy shrubs.

March Wildflowers, Part 3

Wow, I’m really getting behind! But to be honest, April & May haven’t been spectacular, so I’m sticking with the March flowers.

The remaining March wildflower crop are all visible to the naked eye, unlike most of the ones I’ve presented previously.

First up: the Desert Zinnia (Zinnia acerosa)!

March Wildflowers, Part 2

Many of the spring wildflowers don’t look like much from a distance, even a short distance, such as the distance from your eyes to the ground when you’re standing up — maybe 5 or 6 feet. Today’s crop of flowers fall into the category of “weeds”, when seen from above, but are amazing when you look at them close up.

Here’s a typical clump of “weeds” out in the wild part of the yard:

March Wildflowers, Part 1

I know, I’m late. But you’ll like these — I know because I really like them. 🙂

It rained quite a bit in March, meaning we got over an inch(!). And the rain in December got everything ready for a show last month. I’m breaking this up, because there’s so much to see, and I know how long it can take to load pictures, so here we go with Part 1:

First, a bit of overview.

The ground is covered with a multi-colored carpet.

February Wildflowers

— Or — Small, Smaller, Smallest

You have to look pretty quick to catch the spring blooms here, and every month has a new and different crop. So let me show you what beauties I found last month.

First, one of the Fairy Dusters (Calliandra eriophylla):

February Sennas

I have three senna bushes, and they bloom in early spring, meaning the end of January through February. Now at the beginning of March, they are setting seeds.

Yes, We Do Have Seasons Here

It’s winter here in the Sonoran Desert, and that means that for the last month, it’s been in the 60s and low 70s every day. The skies are blue and cloudless, and the sun weakly does its best to provide plenty of cheer (if not much warmth).

It rained in December, enough to get our 2013 yearly total up to 11.5″, which is near enough to our yearly average (12″), and that’s a good thing. Now we’re deep in the season that local gardeners are calling the “green haze”. This is one of those weird, charming seasons in southern Arizona that somehow doesn’t make it into the photography magazines. And it should, because it’s so magical.