Beauty Surrounds Us

Order Tramadol Online Cod Overnight It is easy to miss the details when looking at the whole. We admire the forest, but don’t see the trees, or we do notice a tree, but never examine the pattern of its bark or the intricacies of its flower.

https://valkyrieswebzine.com/nouvel/valium-online-buy-uk.php I’ve been admiring the great stalks of flowers branching out from the many yuccas and agaves in bloom for many weeks, and just first thought to take a close up look at one of its flowers.

Spanish Bayonet Macro

go to link Sotolillo Blossoms in Macro © 2012 Bo Mackison

Tramadol Buy And when I finally did get a closer look – wow. Thousands of tiny white flowers on this sotolillo, white tinges with shades of purple, petals closing together, as if harboring a secret.

https://www.acp-online.org/image/buy-diazepam-roche.php Spring pops up in the desert in the most unlikely of places, but when I began in earnest to go on a “spring hunt” looking for bits of spring, I realized that the season of new life surrounds me. Beauty of a different sort, perhaps, but beauty nonetheless.

https://hereisnewyorkv911.org/fbn1tz4 ————–

https://www.rmporrua.com/mrxm2ru Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona.

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In All Things of Nature

https://www.acp-online.org/image/buy-valium-by-roche-online.php The Spanish Bayonet agave is a wicked sounding plant, and no doubt if you bump into it or step upon a fallen spike, it gives a wicked stab, too. But just as you can’t accurately judge a person by his or her name, or a new food by its appearance, you cannot know a plant by its name, nor a casual glance.

https://bettierose.co.uk/iu40m7s It usually takes time to get to know a plant, or a person for that matter.

Sotolillo

follow Sotolillo © 2012 Bo Mackison

https://riverhillcurrent.com/xmc3l4vxk When I first saw the Spanish Bayonet agave, it was a mass of red tinged, spiky green stabbing sticks. Those who knew the desert well called that bundle of danger an agave plant, or according to some botanists, a very close relative of the agave. I thought perhaps they were being generous.

Spanish Bayonet in Bloom

https://www.iql-nog.com/2025/01/19/4y6tb89zt Spanish Bayonet in Bloom © 2012 Bo Mackison

https://osteopatiaamparoandres.com/nm32z6snzot In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous. ~ Aristotle

https://www.frolic-through-life.com/2025/01/b47a6cw2 Then one day when I was out and about in the Sonoran desert, I saw the Spanish bayonet, but it was no longer simply a spiky plant. Its center had opened, the heart of the plant, and bursting forth was a mass of purple florets. This spiky plant, this plant which has red-tinged tips and a vague look of battle, had always had this beauty in its heart.

Valium Purchasing It was unknown to me, a newcomer to the desert. But what a wonderful gift for me – a surprise bouquet!

Spanish Bayonet

Buy Genuine Valium Uk Flower Spike © 2012 Bo Mackison

https://www.pslra.org/3kqj32fz5f One looks, looks long, and the world comes in. ~ Joseph Campbell

https://valkyrieswebzine.com/nouvel/buy-valium-diazepam-10mg.php The sotolillo – the name I have since learned is the Mexican name of the plant, and one that I quite prefer – offered even more delight at my next visit, a week or so later. The bouquet in the middle of the spikes had stretched – like, I imagine, Jack’s beanstalk grew – and it   stretched towards the sky, a full ten feet high. Lovely!

https://www.amyglaze.com/y67nr1fc05w There is one last photograph of the sotolillo blossom that I will save for Sunday’s post. It is a beauty, perfect for Part II.

https://www.saiidzeidan.com/wk7douv48c0 ——————–

source link Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona. She remains amazed and grateful for the opportunity to see the diversity and beauty of the Sonoran Desert.

Color in the Desert

Hedgehog Cactus Blossom

see Hedgehog Cactus Blossom © 2012 Bo Mackison

https://thelowegroupltd.com/gi82l4rq Our difficult and very urgent task is to accept that nature is not primarily a property to be possessed, but a gift to be received with admiration and gratitude. ~ Henri J. M. Nouwen

I have taken many photographs of many cactus blossoms. But this bright offering of the desert, this magenta blossom perched on the very tip of one of the many stems of this cactus, is my first cactus blossom taken in the natural desert.

Last year the desert was dry, very dry, and the flowers I did see were in botanical gardens where sufficient care was provided to keep the plants satisfied and blooming. But in the desert, along the trails wandering miles from the nearest building, the cactus were late bloomers and I had returned to Wisconsin before there was any blossoms of color in the desert.

But this year? This year I feel as if it is my birthday ever time I hike in the desert, and the desert is intent on giving me daily surprises, gifts of nature that I can only accept with my awakened senses, and then document with my camera and notebook.

It is impossible for me to explain how thrilling it is to be walking along a trail, weaving in and out, and up and down along mountain trails, studying the saguaro cacti forests one mountain over, the saguaros on the southern face of a mountain, as common as pine trees in a Northern forest. And I spot the first blooming cactus I’ve ever seen in the desert – a hedgehog cactus. And it sports one perfectly formed magenta blossom from one stem.

And suddenly, as I walk along, everywhere I look there are magenta flowers popping off the tips of the hedgehog stems. The Sonoran Desert is blooming in bright color as I watch. Occasionally I see a few yellow buds on other hedgehogs, and as I survey the mighty saguaro, I notice a few that have flower buds at their highest tip.

Saguaros typically bloom in mid-May through mid-June in the Tucson region of the Sonoran, but it has been an early blooming season, and the cacti are proving no exception. This year I purposely stayed in Arizona through April, hoping to see the cactus bloom, and I am  quite ecstatic that the desert is showing me her colors.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona until the end of April. She is thrilled that the cactus in the Sonoran desert are beginning to blossom.

Lessons from Desert Flowers

Rock Gilia

Rock Gilia © 2012 Bo Mackison

       The desert’s beauty suggests patience and struggle and endurance. Even in the brightest colors of its brief spring flowers, there is something austere. ~ from The Desert Year by Joseph Wood Krutch

Most of the desert flowers are mere specks on the ground. If there are dozens of them, the color is fairly noticeable, but if there are only two or three quarter-inch blossoms sprawling against a bit of green leaf and a lot of gravelly desert floor, it takes some careful observations to see those pretty little things. Of course, in the desert, the smaller, the better chance at survival. A flower, or leaf on a shrub for that matter, that is minute requires considerably less moisture for survival than a flower or leaf a hundred times that size. Adaptation of the species, as we know it.

Blooming Aloe

Blooming Aloe © 2012 Bo Mackison

Notice how present a flower is, how it has surrendered to life. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Of course, the cacti and the succulents found in the desert have a totally different way to guarantee a flowering season, necessary for the continuation of the species. (No flowers, no seeds. No seed, no new flower).

This aloe is a succulent and has adaptive measures for desert survival. Succulents (and cacti, too) have the ability to suck up water when it does rain and then store it in large quantities. These plants send shallow roots in a wide circumference around the plant, and so the root absorbs the water before it evaporates. And when a succulent, like this bright-orange, flowering aloe, traps water in its system, its waxy surface helps keep the water in the plant and reduces water lost to evaporation.

We humans could learn much by consulting with nature and her ways:

  • Assess our weaknesses and strengths – bolster our weaknesses and play to our strengths.
  • Be resourceful and use our resources wisely. Do not use more natural resources than we need. Consider needs vs. wants.
  • Share your beauty, whether it be small and hidden, delicate and ethereal, or bright and showy.

 

Trees are Sanctuaries

Looking at the Past

Trees are Sanctuaries © 2012 Bo Mackison

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. ~ Herman Hesse

click Trees Are Sanctuaries

1806, The People Build the Church

They make the brick, kiln the lime, raise the walls, lay the roof,
paint murals and sacristy ornamentation, build niches for the statues of the Saints.
They clear the land, build the fences, plant corn and wheat,
and from the priests’ cache of pods and seeds, they plant and then tend
fruit orchards, nut trees, and olive trees.
They learn the ways of the missionaries,
they marry, raise children, care for their sick, weep for their dying, bury their dead.

1827, Weary, Ill, and Wary of Raiding Enemies

Many of the People wrap the statuary in leathery strips of yucca,
the bundled saints cradled like newborn babes
protected from summer’s heat, shifting winds, monsoon thunderstorms,
from damage to their wooden limbs or chipped painted robes or eyes of porcelain marbles.
They walk north, leave the Tumacacori Mountains,
settle in another valley with another priest and another church.

1848, Tumacacori Mission, Deserted in the Desert.

No missionary priest leads his people, crucifix in hand,
his carved cross held high, a silhouette in the blue bowl of sky.
No one gives signal to the last few of the Desert People
who now abandon their homes, possessions, crops;
abandon their church, stacked bricks of adobe, and
precious, the limestone wash, white like angels’ wings;
now the church is an apparition towering amidst the desert grasses, agave, mesquite,
standing in the foreground of the mountains.

2012, A View through the Window

Open to the cool desert nights,
no roof for protection, no doors.
Only the ruins remain,  maintained as ruins.
But the window opening frames the cottonwoods, green and tall,
lining the Santa Cruz River, growing.
They hold my fascination. When I walk to the river,
they form the arched roof over my head,
provide a spongy carpet of decaying leaves under my feet.
Wisps of white cottony fluff, seeds for the future, drift on the southwest breeze.

The trees are the sanctuaries.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona. There are also days Bo wanders through Mission ruins, thinks of days long past, and writes poetry.