A Walk in a Desert Garden

Desert Garden Path

Desert Garden Path © 2013 Bo Mackison

The desert, when the sun comes up…I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began.”
~ Tom Hanks

A walk at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum was the place to see a profusion of desert flowers. The museum isn’t a “desert in a building” – it’s a botanical garden, zoo, and natural history museum. I visit several times a week and there is always something new to see or explore.

A few days ago I spent the day in the desert – I hiked in the Sonoran Desert at Saguaro National Park in the early morning, then came to the Desert Museum for several glasses of prickly pear tea and a walk through the blossoming gardens.

Penstemon

Penstemon © 2013 Bo Mackison

Penstomen is the snapdragon family’s desert representative. Its bright pink blossoms on four foot tall stems are easy to find — in gardens and along roadsides, too.

Orange Blossoms on Hedgehog Cactus

Orange Blossoms on Hedgehog Cactus © 2013 Bo Mackison

This is one of the first cactus to bloom in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson. This was the first cactus I saw bloom when I first visited the desert four years ago. Then, I was thrilled to see a showy orange flower at the end of each stubby cactus arm. The thrill has never diminished. I smile every time I see one of these beauties.

Aloe in Bloom

Aloe in Bloom © 2013 Bo Mackison

The aloe always put on a colorful show. I love how the colors blend from brilliant orange to the cooler greens, blues, and whites.

Evening Primrose

Evening Primrose © 2013 Bo Mackison

The fragrant tufted evening primrose has soft white blossoms that turn a light magenta as they age. The blossoms don’t last long, so it is typical to see buds, white blossoms and aged flowers on the same plant.

Spring Flowers

Desert Spring Flowers © 2013 Bo Mackison

Yellow desert marigolds, a yucca with a flower shoot just starting to grow, and a patch of pink penstemon combine for textures and color in the desert garden.

————-

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She continues to discover beauty and inspiration while exploring the Sonoran Desert

Courage – A Desert Wisdom Card

Mission San Cayetano de Calabazas

Crossing the Threshold © 2013 Bo Mackison

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face . . . we must do that which we think we cannot. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

When experiencing disappointment or loss, it is natural to seek a counterbalance, a positive action to balance the negative.

The counterbalance of fear is courage. Crossing a threshold into a dark unknown space can evoke fears. But even in the darkest of spaces, we have an ability no one can take away. The choice of how we react, what we think, what we choose to say.

The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource. . . ~Daniel J Boorstin

Even in the darkest of spaces, we can imagine a star-filled universe, the constancy of waves sweeping a sandy beach, a window with a view of a fruit-filled orchard. We can appreciate the light because we have an understanding of the dark.

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. ~ John Quincy Adams

COURAGE offers questions/reflections for journal, art prompts, and calls to action:

  • Crossing a significant life threshold takes courage. When the choice is happily anticipated, enthusiasm for the change lessens, though doesn’t alleviate, fear of the unknown. When crossing a threshold brings about unwanted or unplanned changes, courage and determination help balance our fears. Consider thresholds you have crossed – a job change, new responsibilities, a birth, a death, a move. How do you respond to changes in your life?
  • Once fear is identified as a limiting factor, action can defuse this emotion. Courage is answering the questions: “Why am I afraid?” “What can I do to face my fear?”
  • Though John Quincy Adam’s refers to the invisible “magical talisman” of courage and perseverance, it is often helpful to have a physical object as a reminder. One of the simplest talismans to create is a small rock inscribed with a message. Examine your environment for small rocks until you find a rock that feels right. Paint it a bright color or leave it natural. Use a permanent marker to inscribe the word COURAGE on its surface. Carry it in your pocket or place in your work area or bed side table as a reminder.
  • Practice courage in small doses by doing an activity that is not routine. Take a different route to work or the store. Shop in a local market rather than your nearby mega-grocery store. Eat a sack lunch on a park bench instead of eating from a fast food drive-through. Say hello to strangers, meet them eye-to-eye, and smile. These small acts may not seem courageous, but by moving out of your comfort zone, you will stretch the muscles that feed your courage.

————–

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a deck of Desert Wisdom Cards for self-exploration and discovery using her photography and the Sonoran Desert theme – its myths and stories, cultures and history, and the desert’s remarkable natural beauty and resources.

 

Blooming Desert

Sonoran Desert, Saguaro National Park

Sonoran Desert, Saguaro National Park © 2013 Bo Mackison

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air. ~ Paul Hoffman

Beauty – A Desert Wisdom Card

Two Poppies

Mexican Poppies © 2013 Bo Mackison

 “Beauty nurtures the soul by serving the spirit.
Beauty takes you out of your cramped,
merely personal worries and sets you down in a field of eternity.”
~ Thomas Moore in Dark Nights of the Soul

In the desert, the appearance of the ephemeral wildflowers in a time of joyous observation.

These rugged flowers only bloom following a unique set of conditions — enough rain throughout early winter, warm enough temperatures to allow for germination and growth, no cold spells that might kill delicate seedlings. There are so many factors that lead to a brilliant display of desert wildflowers that a peak bloom happens only once or twice a decade.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ~ Confucius

Nonetheless, a few wildflowers can always be found – in a rocky, dry wash, in the cooler higher elevations, near bushes and trees which afford the flowers enough protection. While a mountain slope clothed in swaying poppies is spectacular, so are a half-dozen plucky blossoms that found growing space in a rocky crevice. And perhaps a ragged flower clinging to the side of a cliff, tenacious and reaching towards the sunlight, is the most beautiful flower of them all.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

BEAUTY offers questions/reflections for journal, art prompts, and calls to action:

  • Desert wildflowers require specific conditions in order to come into blossoms of beauty. What are some of the conditions that might be necessary for your inner beauty to burst into blossom?
  • Although it is not necessary to search for a special place to find beauty, there are spaces and sites designed by man or formed by nature, which evoke deep feelings of appreciation. Spend some time strolling through a sculpture garden, viewing a scenic overlook on a stretch of familiar highway, or enjoying a backyard flower bed.
  • Take a few minutes to notice your response to beauty. Does it offer you calm, encouragement, comfort, inspiration, rejuvenation, grounding? Can you replicate those emotions by observing beauty in your world?
  • Georgia O’Keeffe was a prolific painter and most people are aware of her larger than life floral and still life paintings. Many of her most popular painting were of flowers, but she created many other paintings – skulls, desert landscapes, missions. She painted abstracts, used bright colors, focused on a small part of the whole. Her paintings are infused with her spirit, they are not a duplicate of what she saw. She broke many rules of the art world she lived in, but had the fearlessness and independence to paint in her unique style. Examine a website or book of O’Keeffe’s paintings. Then apply her painting philosophy to any art medium you wish to explore. Dare. Be different. Make up your own rules. How does this freedom affect your attitude towards art in general, your process, your end product?
  • Make  space in your life for the appreciation of beauty. Does a cluttered environment obstruct a basket of flowers or the gleaming hardwood floors in your home? Does a cluttered schedule take precedence over an impromptu stop to listen to the early morning cacophony of birdsong or watch clouds float across the sky?

————–

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a deck of Desert Wisdom Cards for self-exploration and discovery using her photography and the Sonoran Desert theme – its myths and stories, cultures and history, and the desert’s remarkable natural beauty and resources.

Blooming Poppies

Mexican Poppies

Mexican Poppies © 2013 Bo Mackison

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts. ~ William Hazlett

In the seed.

Creation explosion,
Mystery  and heritage.

Sacred place; festive space.

Sensory sanctuary.
Rejuvenation.

In the garden.

————-

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Season of joy – poppies blooming in the Sonoran Desert.