I was interested to see what had happened to the ocotillo flowers the ants had out to dry by their palace entrances. With such a strong wind and heavy downpour, I assumed the orange red blossoms would blow away.
The ants were out working on their entrance when I got there, rearranging the protective barriers of coarse sand grains and tiny pebbles that kept yesterday’s deluge from flooding their palace. Amazingly, the masses of tiny orange and red ocotillo flowers the ants stored outside had not been dislodged by the wind and rain, only slightly shifted.
How do the ants get the dried flowers to stay put during storms? Glue? Weaving? Magnetism? I took a closer look at one of the tiny dried florets and saw that the anthers and pistils had dried into hooked tendrils that the ants had interlocked to form a blanket of blossoms. The ants attached the tendrils to large grains of ant hill sand where they remained, impervious to wind and rain until they were ready to be taken underground.
The small mesquite lizard in the front yard likes to sun himself on the round stones shaped and smoothed long ago by human hands. The lizard has other good rocks in the sun to choose from but for some reason he prefers the smooth man-made surfaces.
CHAPTER 29
It’s the beginning of June but the early mornings are still cool enough for a walk. Today as I was returning from my walk, and still some distance from my driveway, I noticed two piercing laser-bright red lights in the mesquite tree in my front yard. How strange they were! At first I couldn’t imagine what I was seeing, but then I realized it was the early morning angle of the sunlight that caused odd visual effects this time of the year, and what I actually saw were the hummingbird feeders an eighth of a mile away. The sunlight shone through the red sugar water which acted as a lens to focus the light.
Under the mesquite tree I saw a dozen or more brown ants bringing down a cicada ten times larger than they were. The cicada struggled feebly from the effects of the ant venom, and I noticed the cicada’s second skin was separating for a molt, and part of the old exoskeleton seemed stuck to its wings and tail.
One hummingbird came to the feeder while I sat on the porch. She is the female with the black line on her tail feathers. I said, “Where were you? I missed you.” The hummingbird darted away. I forgot the human voice out loud sounds ugly to the hummingbirds. I should have whispered. She didn’t go far but I didn’t want to disturb her again to ask her the whereabouts of the other hummingbirds and the bees.
The sudden rain last week gave the greasewoods enough nourishment for another flowering this spring. I hope the bees and hummingbirds are not missing, only browsing nearby in all the many waxy white saguaro blossoms and sweet yellow greasewood flowers.
The night-blooming cactus, la reina de la noche in the clay pot, the one I started from a twig, had a single gorgeous perfumed blossom last night and early this morning. Then it was finished.
The reinas are indigenous to the Sonoran Desert. They frequently grow under jojoba bushes for partial shade but this makes them difficult to locate unless they are in blossom. The bulk of the reina is a tuberous root underground; what appears to be a leafless stick pokes up through the ground and the jojoba branches. In early summer the leafless stick forms a bud and just after sundown a large white blossom emerges. Then their heavenly perfume gives them away. The scent is delicate and haunting, never heavy or cloying, and reminds me of the lovely perfume of the white orchid flowers of the Brassavola nodosa from Central America where it blooms for the autumnal equinox.
The scent of the brugmansia blossoms were a disappointment — I expected they’d be as fragrant as the purple datura but they were lovely to see. They require a good deal of water and rich soil — both in limited supply here. No wonder they grow best in the Quechua graveyards in the mountains of Peru. In the twilight their pendulous yellow blossoms are ghostly, resembling the dead souls on the branches of the Tree of Life.
On my walk this morning I picked up a rock the size of my two fingers with speckles and threads of turquoise. The rock is light greenish gray basalt and the turquoise is a light green blue that collected in a triangular crease near the lower middle of the rock. On the far right end, midpoint, there is a raisin of iron ore.
This morning, instead of coming in to work on the manuscript, I sat in the shade on the front porch and watched the mesquite lizard catch the tiny gnats that swarmed around the lower limb of the big mesquite tree. The lizard had lovely patterns of ivory and copper over brown and darker shades that mimicked the bark of a mesquite tree. Suddenly the lizard moved, then turned and bounced up and down on its front legs to assert his dominance over his territory, but why?
I looked around and about eight feet away on the trunk of the smaller mesquite tree I saw a larger spiny desert lizard I call a “sky lizard” because of its brilliant blue color. Sky lizards like to sit at the top of the stucco walls of my house in camouflage, their blue silhouettes hidden in the blue of the sky.
The spiny lizard intensified the brightness of his iridescent turquoise blue and he puffed up his spiny neck with its elegant black necklace marking. Fat with all the gnats he ate in the tree, his tail was a luminous pale turquoise blue, the color of the summer sky overhead. His ribs and chest were intense turquoise of the greatest substance and purity, and the blue on his head and his back was the shade of lapis lazuli.
The mesquite lizard appeared unconcerned about the puffed up spiny lizard and instead watched the Gila woodpecker that flitted around the hummingbird feeder until it managed to find a place for its claw so it could tip the feeder and its contents into its beak.
I left the house early as the sun was still behind the Catalina Mountains to the east. The air was cool, and I could smell just a hint of the dampness, the last trace of the sudden rainstorm of a few weeks ago. The scent of the greasewood was pervasive because the bushes are covered with tiny waxy yellow flowers. A few orange carmine blossoms remain stored outside the ant palaces but I saw no ants.
At the ant hill which had been trampled by humans and horses earlier in the month, I found the damage had been repaired by a rainstorm which smoothed away the boot-prints and hoof-prints into a concentric circular pattern. I saw seven or eight ants working on the entrance to arrange the grains of sand the rainstorm brought before it got too hot.
I heard loud noises of rocks clattering in the nearby arroyo where I had seen the giant rattlesnake. I stopped and stood still and a herd of six or seven large mule deer does stared at me, uncertain whether they should run. I went on my way at once to reassure them I was no threat.
All the trees and shrubs are bright green and many are blossoming again. Each rainstorm in the Sonoran Desert brings another springtime of wild flowers and cactus blossoms even if it only lasts two weeks.
In the big arroyo right after the rain I found three pieces of turquoise rock uncovered by the runoff. But since then I’ve not found any; I noticed the floodwater left a layer of dove gray clay on the pebbles and rocks, so the turquoise isn’t as visible. To wash off the clay, a gentle steady rain is needed; then I’ll be able to spot the turquoise rocks again.
Each time the trail went downhill and across even the smallest arroyo, the cool moist air rushed past my face in the most delicious manner. I felt my skin drink it in. The cool air held subtle perfumes of the catsclaw and mesquite that blossomed following the rain. In the big arroyo the flow of cool air had much more of a woody green herbal scent.