The desert in bloom!

Well spring is here! In the last two weeks everything has just been popping open--even those silly creosotes have turned out to be quite lovely. They are even starting to release their little seeds which shows me how they reproduce so well--they are little puff balls that can fly in the wind! No wonder there are so many of these bushes--they are really more like a weed!

My aloe vera was quite surprising too--almost over night they sprouted this tall stem when tons of blossoms on it--the flowers havn't opened yet but I'll post more when they do--the desert is just about to go in full bloom--

below is one of my new "scrawnier" aloe veras out front--but they still grew quite a stalk--they arn't done growing yet, in a years time I expect the plant will get much bigger

even the cacti are starting to make flowers--I can't wait to see those bloom--there is something just so remarkable about the flowers on the cacti--all year long they are they pokey looking things, they get hardly any water at all--and then suddenly there is this beautiful flower...

Here is one of our barrel cacti with some pretty wild desert flowers beneath. This one hasn't made a blossom yet, but when it does it will turn into a yellow fruit with black seeds.

Below is the cholla cactus (say "choy-ya")--I think these are such beautiful cacti but they sure are nasty--apart from the big stickers they have the teeniest tiniest little prickers that you need tweezers to get out and all you have to do is barely brush against them and you get stuck! And yet...all of my chollas have birds nests in them...how does that work? I guess the birds have got it figured out somehow. Can't wait to see what these blossoms look like!

Here is the prickly pear! I can't wait to see what its flowers look like too! They're getting started! This one will make the prickly pear fruit that is famous for turning into a delicious jelly!

And even more surprising--yesterday I went in my little fenced garden to see how my tangelo and lemon trees were doing--very well, very pretty flowers. Below is the tangelo and here is the lemon blossomsand while I was looking at them I thought I'd also check on my carrots and lettuce and pototoes although I'd all but given up on them.
I wasn't even watering them anymore. It's been weeks and there was nothing.
But the ground where the pototoes were did look all cracked so I thought I'd dig it up and see what happened down there... maybe find some rotted potato or something...
well I didn't have to dig too far! Much to my surprise--about an inch below the surface were yellow-green shoots coming up! I quickly buried them back and watered them! I was singing praises to the Lord yesterday! When I had no faith he still provided!

Here's one of the little shoots! Can you believe it grew in this soil?! It is ROCK hard. But those shoots were so strong these even cracked the soil pushing their way up! God is so amazing to make something so little so strong. :) So I'm going to keep on watering those carrots--maybe they'll surprise me too!