Parting Gifts from the Desert

Macro Torch Cactus

https://www.saiidzeidan.com/grjq4312y Torch Cactus © 2012 Bo Mackison

source url My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth. ~ Lady Bird Johnson

https://riverhillcurrent.com/1mec7qx I am on the home stretch — literally. In 36 hours, I will point my car towards the east, and then north, to begin the long drive home. Happily, Sherpa is flying in tomorrow, so no one has to drive alone for three and a half days.

here I had today and tomorrow scheduled with packing, returning library books, changing addresses, saying good byes with neighbors and arranging for the many things that need arranging before a long trip.

http://geoffnotkin.com/laygu/buy-diazepam-bulk.php And then I received an email from the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. They were sending a short note to all their members  to let us now that the dazzling “Fireworks Cacti” were now in full bloom, and would be for only a few days.

Online Tramadol Mastercard So instead of following my original plans, I made room in my schedule for a three-hour photo shoot of some of the most unusual cactus flowers I have ever seen.  The flowers are in all the warm colors one associates with desert and heat — yellows, hot pinks, oranges, reds. Once I saw the cacti all in bloom, I had a very difficult time leaving. (I finally left after I’d taken over 600 photos, but only because I had filled my 16 gig memory card — and that’s a huge card!)

https://osteopatiaamparoandres.com/vb3lh8fdry So — the cactus are called Torch Cactus, and they bloom for only a few days each year. They are not a native plant to the Sonoran desert, but they thrive here, and have become a landscape favorite because of their hardiness and beautiful color displays.

here I promise. There are many more amazing photographs of these very photogenic flowers to come.

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https://www.accessoriesresourceteam.org/art/buy-valium-5mg.php Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She traveled to Arizona to live and photograph the desert’s beauty for one hundred days. Getting ready for a drive.

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Desert Yucca

Yucca in Bloom

Order Valium Online From India Yucca in Bloom © 2012 Bo Mackison

Valium Online Overnight Delivery The yucca is one of the more prominent plants in the desert Southwest when in bloom, sending a long stalk eight feet into the air topped  with white flowers.

https://www.amyglaze.com/tvx7f0wd These kinds of plants are common in the desert. For much of the year they grow low to the ground, green sharp spikes in a rosette. And then, spring arrives, a  few rainfalls followed by hot weather and the yuccas bloom soft and white.

Ordering Tramadol Online Legal The desert is a study in contrasts.

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https://hereisnewyorkv911.org/qxutwm9g1k Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She traveled to Arizona to live and photograph the desert’s beauty for one hundred days. Down to the last two desert days.

Shrimp Plant

Shrimp Plant in Vignette

see Shrimp Plant in Vignette © 2012 Bo Mackison

click The sun doesn’t shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the whole world’s joy.  ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Buy Diazepam Eu Yes. There is a plant called a Shrimp Plant, and once you’ve seen one, you forever know why it is called the shrimp plant. It looks almost good enough to eat. Roasted shrimp from Tucson’s first 100˚ day – yes, indeed! I was hungry and they looked tempting . . .

https://www.rmporrua.com/p4i6oa9s I visited the Tucson Botanical Gardens this morning, thinking I could be back home before it became too hot. I was wrong. I spent way too much time photographing Zen Gardens and wheelbarrows and shadows and fountains and sprinkling cans . . . you get the idea.

Shrimp Plant

Tramadol Overnight Visa Shrimp Plant © 2012 Bo Mackison

http://lisapriceblog.com/2agjnxn I also photographed this Shrimp Plant just before I left the gardens. Yes, it was two in the afternoon and way too bright, but happily these plants were in the shade. And yes, I was a bit worn out and did not set up my tripod because I had just packed it in order to leave.  But the wind was cooperative, I suppose, in that there was no wind.  And so I took several quick snaps of these beauties.

https://www.acp-online.org/image/order-valium-sweden.php Really! Have you ever seen a flower that was as shrimp colored as a shrimp? And a flower that was both shrimp colored and the shape of a shrimp?

https://www.frolic-through-life.com/2025/01/4bqt91z8 From my internet research, I discovered that these are tropical plants, native to Mexico, but popular as house and garden plants in the states of Texas and Florida. I didn’t see any references to Shrimp Plants in Arizona, but I know where several are blooming.

Visit the Tucson Botanical Gardens to get a look at the real thing.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.

 

 

 

Prairie Dog Babies

Six Week Old Prairie Dog Babies

Prairie Dog Babies © 2012 Bo Mackison

Aren’t they cute? These prairie dog babies are about six weeks old, and it was only their second day out in the sun. Their mama had kept them safely in their nesting burrow until they were ready to meet the big world. They rub noses to greet each other, to say “hello”.

Animals aren’t one of my usual subjects, but I was wandering around the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum yesterday. I followed a path I had never been on before, rather amazed that in my dozens of visits to this mecca of desert learning I had never traveled this loop. I found myself in front of a large open exhibit of native black-tailed prairie dogs.

There were maybe fifteen to twenty adults out of their burrows, cavorting in the sun, standing watch, signaling to each other with a variety of calls and shrieks, and in general doing the animal things they do. One of the more interesting gestures I observed was a leap in the air from an alert standing position accompanied by a shriek – evidently an “all clear” signal. An attention getter, for sure.

It was a hot day and when I spotted an area of shade with an inviting bench, I stopped for a sit in the shade. Two nearby docents were discussing the prairie dogs with a couple from British Columbia, and it was evident from their exuberant commentary that they were true fans of these Prairie Dogs. In a few minutes I found out a huge amount of information:

  • Prairie dogs were once a common animal on the US Plains and in the western states, but eradication by ranchers, hunters, and state and national groups has reduced their populations to 1% of their original numbers.
  • In the 1970s it was erroneously reported that 250 prairie dogs could eat the equivalent amount of grass that one cow consumed, and so systematic poisoning was undertaken.
  • There was no any scientific proof that the prairie dogs interfered with the feeding of cattle. Instead, it has been found that the prairie dogs and cattle have co-existed for hundreds of years, as each prefers different grasses. Nonetheless, the myth remains and though prairie dogs populations continue to decline, they are not a protected species. Instead they continue to be needlessly killed.
  • The black-tailed prairie dog is the predominant prey for the black-footed ferret, once considered extinct until a small number were found in Wyoming. The black-footed ferret is prey for some of the threatened populations of falcons. Lose one species, lose others, too.
  • Just one more example of messing with the food chain. When one animal becomes extinct, suddenly it affects the status of many other animals. Makes one wonder how many kinds of animals can be forever lost to the earth before it has a detrimental impact on human existence.

I certainly didn’t expect to learn all that information (and much more) on my ten minute sit, but the docents were interesting, knowledgeable, and showed true compassion and caring for the animals in their care.

(Most of the animals at the Desert Museum, especially the larger mammals such as the mountain lion and black bear, are in this environment because they were rehabbed and are unable to live in the wild.)

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona until April’s end. Then she will return to her Midwest home where it is currently cloudy and the high is expected to near 45˚F.

 

 

 

 

Saying My Farewells to the Desert

Prickly Pear Bloom, Vintage Touch

Prickly Pear Bloom, Vintage Touch © 2012 Bo Mackison

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?  ~ Henry David Thoreau

I have lived on the fringe of the Sonoran Desert for nearly one hundred days.

A hundred days of chores and explores, of work and play, of exciting discoveries and routine administrative duties, of quiet and solitude, but also a longing for conversation and thankfulness when a visitor would come for a few days.

From my home in Arizona, I can leave civilization and be a wanderer in near-wilderness in less than twenty minutes. Twenty minutes from leaving my front door to walking amidst giant saguaros. (That is if I remember everything the first time around — sunscreen, hat, walking stick, water, snacks, map, compass.) The desert does command preparedness.

I go on an incredible sensory tour each time I walk the desert.

I follow ancient trails that pass blooming cactus – flowers that only bloom from one afternoon to the next – and petroglyphs carved in desert varnish on boulders that have remained visible for hundreds of years. I can focus on the beauty, and sometimes capture a part of it with my camera, while I am serenaded by the wind and dozens of birds calling out to each other, and perhaps to me. I can inhale the desert fragrance — a combination of dust and oldness, the faintest aroma of creosote.

I can touch the desert, but only with great care and only if I follow her rules.

I can gently explore the sharpness of the thorns strategically positioned at the end of a branch of the palo verde. Or I can place my hands on the bark of the ironwood or the mesquite. I carry a rock or two in my pocket for a half mile, fingering it, examining it, then returning it to the desert floor. I study a piece of a cactus skeleton, amazed at the structural intricacies that remain long after the cactus itself has toppled over and died.

I watch the lizards scuttle from rock to rock, the quails shuttle from one bush to another.

In these few months, combined with my visits over the past four years, I’ve come to consider the desert a place more to my liking than the Midwest where I was born, raised, and schooled; where I worked, married, had children and raised them until they were no longer children; where I was (and still am) a wife and a mother, and where I first took photographs and eventually claimed my creativity through photography.

When I return to Wisconsin in a few days, it will not take much time for the lush spring to entice me with its variety and colors and deep fragrances. With its green grasses, shrubs, trees. I will wander the prairies and woodlands there, and find familiarity and comfort there. I will be with my family and friends again, and for that I am grateful.

And when I recall the desert and her many gifts, I know that I will return to the Sonoran Desert.

When 2012 passes and 2013 arrives, I’ll begin again.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona until April’s end. Then she will migrate to her home in the Midwest.