Bloom Where You're Planted...

And who says the desert isn't colorful?

Or that it's dry and drab?

Well, that may ring true for a lot of the year, but during the Spring (especially when we've had a lot of winter water) the desert is an unexpected paradise...mostly because you're not expecting to see and smell such beauty in such a desolate and arid world.

So many of the plants that flower are also covered with spiny thorns...to keep the various water seeking animals out of the supply they have stored inside of their succulent branches.

And for the few that don't bloom...they can find themselves totally surrounded by other colors...like bright yellows and oranges of lichen that attach themselves to the rocks.

And who can not love poppies?

Especially in this setting?

Or any setting, seeing as they love to seed themselves wherever they want, which usually doesn't include where you put them in the first place.

Silly poppies.

And still a few of the flowers have prickles themselves as a part of their beauty...like thistles.  Wonderfully  majestic to look at, but I don't ever want to touch them...

The Joshua Trees that dot about and also forest themselves in a mini Joshua Tree forest even bloom...their twisted and pod-like flowers reaching for the sun...their branches corkscrewing to follow.

At one point, we passed a sign by the road that said:

Joshua Tree -->

and I almost spit out my Blizzard.

I know.

Can you believe I had a Blizzard?

We pulled over to get gas, and there conveniently happened to be both a Jack in the Box and a Dairy Queen sandwiching the mini-market, and I just couldn't resist.

To my own credit, I haven't had one in 4 years, and I probably won't again for at least that long.

Anyway...that Joshua Tree sign cracked us up.

I kept wondering for the rest of the trip why there weren't more that said:

Saguaro -->

or

Ocotillo -->

And one of my most delightful finds was this flowering bush that looked as though it had little pink paper lanterns hanging all over it.  I can't ever remember seeing this particular flower, but I found myself totally and completely smitten with it's beautiful delicateness.

Although, the thing about seeing any kind of flower in the desert makes you really consider it's delicate beauty and purpose...they make the bees happy for sure, and I can only imagine what the honey tastes like in this region.  But perhaps the most astounding thought of all is that no matter how isolated any of these plants and flowers are, there they are minute after minute...totally blooming and fulfilling their destiny, whether anyone is there to notice or not.

They don't care.

They just are.

Which I thought was some pretty perfect miracles to witness on my 40th year on the Earth...Even she, the Earth was busy celebrating.

How perfectly lovely.