The vernal equinox is here, at last! Spring came early for those of us living in the Southeast. The procession of blooms here is well under way. And I wonder about our arid lands, the country of my childhood. Has spring arrived in the desert? Has it rained?
Are those long-legged darkling beetles out of their retreats and scampering across the sands in the Columbia River plateau or down in the Mohave? Standing on their heads in the early morning? (Why? Turns out – a little dew trickles from their backs, down to their mouths).
Have the early spring rains brought out my favorites, those big red mites, searching across the desert floor? Ángeles or Velvet Mites, bright red, feeding on termites when those emerge. Their eggs hatch into tiny parasites which attach to the knees of desert locusts.
Are the kangaroo rats foraging in the dusk, finding seeds, leaping high to evade the attentions of the prairie rattlers?
In the Big Bend – are the bluebonnets up? It’s the Texas state flower, and clusters pop up in fields and roadsides everyplace, but I think those in the Big Bend National Park are taller and a deeper blue than anyplace else.
We would take my grandmother to see the spring wildflowers down in Kennedy County, the old DeSoto chugging along, south of Kingsville where the highway ended. She’d tell us of girlhood days and the burst of desert color on her grandfather’s ranch in LaSalle County, along the Nueces River.
And of course – there's the prickly pear cactus, all over. Little wisps of cotton hiding the cochineal bugs. Those marvelous blooms – the original Yellow Rose of Texas.
Is it raining in the desert this spring? I’d like to know…
Dac Crossley
March 20, 2011
“It beckons, and I reckon I would work for any wage, to be free again, just to be again, where the bloom is on the sage.” – Gene Autry.
It's been wet here in Arizona. I just put up some photos on Facebook of our Sonoran spring, including the original Yellow Rose of Texas that you cite. Maybe that'll help your nostalgia a bit?
Posted by: Becky | April 12, 2011 at 03:42 PM
Nostalgic, poetic, love it!
Posted by: shirley white | March 20, 2011 at 04:58 PM
It would make me happy to hear, too. We can tell it's spring here because some of the water (from the sky and on the ground) is liquid. I'm told skunk cabbage is blooming, and I saw a paper wasp on the sidewalk on St Patrick's Day. Perfect spring weather-for Green Bay.
DAC, I always saw Dinothrombium velvet mites after thunderstorms in the summer.
Posted by: Mike Draney | March 20, 2011 at 03:38 PM
Hi Dac, The Anza Borego Desert has had a couple of recent rains and the wildflowers have responded. Check this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISXogU2Kf5o
Ron
Posted by: Ron Carroll | March 20, 2011 at 01:13 PM