What I love about the Chicago suburbs is that there are forest preserves along many of the major highways. I love pulling over and taking a walk in the woods. (Not quite as much in the winter months though.) In these months, I go looking for some green in the desert after the recent rains. In the “Valley of the Sun,” you’ll not find forest preserves, but Sonoran Desert Preserves with easy trail access. And there I found:
Grassy Desert
Green!
We were hiking in the Cave Creek Preserve area, about thirty-five miles due north of a more well-known landmark, Camelback Mountain:
Camelback in the distance
The plant in the foreground is one of my favorite in the desert. I gasped when we came around a bend and faced a field of them! (The photo doesn’t capture just how “surrounded” you feel by these interesting plants reaching skyward.) Folks try to grow these for domestic landscape use, but they seldom seem to fare well. In the natural world after the big rain, these are looking especially lush.
Must find out what they're called
Like many varieties in the desert, they aren’t as friendly as they look though:
I’ll go back when they bloom. These will turn into what look like orange tags. They’ve got quite the flair against the green:
Quite the dramatic vegetation. Here’s another, imploring “Y!” against the bright blue sky:
Y? Because it rained! Here’s what’s left of the rain… (We’d come four days earlier and this was a running wash…it sure disappears quickly!)
Where waterfall had been!
Just a trickle remains:
Back through the wash on our way out. Most things happen slowly in the desert. Moist things disappear quickly:
umbecauseisaidso 