When The Desert Blooms

For about a week every year, California's high desert blooms. This is usually about a month after the rains stop. The grass is green and growing all throughout the desert. Poppies start to emerge. The mountains have a golden-green sheen to them and the yucca plants flower. The weather is short-sleeve pleasant during the day and homeowners contemplate when they'll need to start mowing their lawns.

This is that week. We don't have anything like the glorious crop of poppies we had last year, but when the desert is green it's still quite pretty up here. I can believe it when we come across old documents from when this area was first settled which describe open flowing streams and ponds that lasted all year long, and realize that it made sense back in the day for the first people here to make their living by farming despite the absence of aqueduct.

Next week, of course, all the grass will be dead again, and the blooming yucca trees will be replaced by dead tumbleweeds. But I'm enjoying it all right now.