Penury and profusion

Claret Cup Cactus -- my all-time favorite bloom in the desert

May is a splendid month in southeast Utah. Temperatures are usually moderate, spring winds are beginning to abate, and new life abounds. For the plant world, this brief season utilizes the remaining moisture from the winter’s snowmelt, adds the intermittent spring rains, and astounds us mortals with a blast of color and creativity. Changes happen day by day, hour by hour, and even minute by minute. Each species does whatever it must to ensure its continuity.

Lomatium species

I saw my first blooms in late March; the inconspicuous Lomatium species didn’t seem to mind the lingering snowdrifts, but caught me off guard when I stumbled upon them in my off-trail hikes. April brought small bits of color, like the diminutive yellow Newberry’s Twinpod tucked into a protected crack in the rock, or the purple milkvetch along the roadside. One had to be looking, or it was easy to miss.

And then May. The botanical universe decides this is its one and only chance, and it pulls out all the stops. You name a color; it’s here. Flora I’ve never seen become my companions on daily hikes.

Indian Paintbrush

Olfactory delights surround. Aromas of cliff-rose and evening primrose fill the air currents, and if I put my nose in their blooms I breathe and breathe and don’t want to return to normal air ever again. I miss my Minnesota lilacs greatly, but realize that cliff-rose and primrose are fragrant and exquisite trade-offs.

Dwarf Lupine (full grown -- 3"-4")

Visual feasts assail — although that verb is far too strong.  “Ambush” might be more accurate. An overflowing English garden might assail, or the rose gardens by the lakes in Minneapolis, or the conservatory in Como Park. Here, one small vibrant mound of Indian Paintbrush carries incredible visual weight. A single bloom stalk of handsome yucca or purple lupine gratifies. In the vastness and remoteness of an arid desert, little is much. This penuriousness adds layers of delight as one walks among the rock and dirt and sand, and encounters one perfect plant with only three blooms. Survival is the theme.

Exquisite designs need designers, and it is not possible for me to view what I do each day — flora, fauna, scoured canyons, flaming sunsets — without acknowledging the Designer/Creator whose mind conceived it all and whose word spoke it into being. I am grateful, so grateful, to experience the generosity of heaven through all my senses.