Summer Bloomers

One of Badboulder's native plants, the holly oak, is displaying an immediate response to just two nights of low forty degree temperatures. This morning, its berries had turned from green to red. Phoenix traffic lights aren't much faster, unless one of those pesky cameras is involved. A closer look at some other plants confirmed that fall is indeed in the air.

We have a short growing season at this altitude but September is too early for me to say good-bye to most of our bloomers--that goldenrod can go. There's a red leaf or two among the Virginia Creeper vines, the Pampas grass is pluming and the grasshoppers are "plaguing".

Desert plants receiving summer monsoon rains can sprout, grow, bloom and seed in an amazingly short time cycle. Seemingly dead plants, thorny-pricklies as well as the more gentle varieties, revive and flower. Even our old faithfuls: geraniums, marigolds, morning glories, zinnias, Pampas grass, and orange trumpet join the Russian thistles, wild sunflowers, poppies, and Mexican hats in their last hurrah.

It's a fantastic (better not use that word Halcyon again) time of year to use our new camera and capture the "Jubilee".

The days are still hot enough to justify making smoothies and iced cappuccinos in the afternoons; Dave's World Famous Margaritas for the evenings--WOW!

FROM THE KNOTHOLE: If I were to look out over Badboulder, from my lofty perch up here in my snug little knothole, there is not a day that I could not see blooms, full across my sweeping mountainside view, or, during winter, perhaps a tiny shimmering bloom lodged between some boulders, seeking a fleeting ray of winter's gentle sun. There is never a day when I cannot find a bloom. There is never a day that I do not look for a bloom. I take nothing for granted. I am thankful for blooms.

a parting shot from bbman: those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire. kurt tucholsky, german-jewish journalist, satirist, writer, 1890-1935