The sagebrush is looking really lovely about now..**BG** Oh, Peter, just beautiful...and black walnut, I want to live in your yard! It sounds just lovely.

One has to look a little harder out here for the special treats, some of the flowers are brash and strong enough to mount up like the cavalry and ride across the plains, waving their yellow banners, but many are ground-hugging forces, safer keeping their heads hunkered down out of the wind, with many tendrils spread along the ground, in circle fans, anchoring them in a tentative search for water and safety. Their tenacity makes them even more endearing.

I have had some very special treats in my neglected yard. A hardy, miniature-sized blooms carnation I started from seed about 4 years ago, has come up every year on its own. I never water it and it has about 50-60 blooms on it now. Just gorgeous and smells delicious. My catnip started the same way & keeps producing euphoria for the critters, too. I've also just found a tiny 12" locust tree has come up by a windblow seed on my little front corner patch where the snow-in-summer, pinks, and wild mountain mint are holding their own. Trees are a precious commodity out here and it pleases me to no end seeing this brave and adventurous soul sprouting up, already offering a lacy shade to small bugs and the like.

I hope to make it up on the mountain this weekend, as it is a bit more colourful...still a lot of low-lying flora, but much showier, complete, wall-to-wall carpeting of ladyslipper orchids and many others, incluing Wyoming's state flower, Indian paintbrush, and Colorado's state flower, the lovely columbines.

If one is really feeling like a complete fool and wants to trek across the prairie, in 100 degree heat with very little water in sight and a hot zephry whipping up the dustdevils, one can also espy clumps of gracious cacti blooming, again low to the ground...but in fantastic, almost psychedelic colours of pink, yellow, and white, the blooms almost as big as the whole clumps of spiny and dangerous *leaves*. Makes one definitely appreciate what the Natives and the pioneers had to contend with AND to watch where one is stepping...now I know why mom and dad always made us wear high-top cowboy boots! Kept the snakebites away, too!

Nice thought, Peter. Made me nostalgic for all of those gardening threads we had. Classic Spaw, too....LOL

kat