Yesterday, my wife and I along with two other couples traveled out to the Anza Borrego desert, an area just east of the San Diego mountains I live in. It's about 50 miles from our home (and about 85 miles from the wooden spaceship), but it looks like another planet — hot and dry, but full of life. We were visiting this time to see the wildflowers.
Because we had better rains this winter than we have had for the past few years, this year we were treated to a particuarly nice display. The flower at right is an ocotillo bloom (click to enlarge). For many locals, the ocotillo is the "signature plant" of the Anza Borrego desert, and it is prolific here — but it grows in many other places as well. This year we saw carpets of lupine, desert chicory, and desert poppies — but as always, the real treasures were the isolated individual flowering plants, often so tiny you can't spot them until you've almost crushed them underfoot...
2 Comments
