My Desert is Yellow

Gardeners often disparage yellow.  It's too easy.  It's too safe.  Everything blooms in yellow, even if it also blooms in blue or red or white.  There's no challenge.

I fell victim to that kind of snobbery for exactly one full year of growing seasons.  I learned quickly but not painlessly that you take what you can get here in Zone 12. (For all you gardening nerds: that's Sunset Western Gardens zone system, not the USDA's zone system.  A quick explanation of the difference is here.)  If you want results, you can't afford to be picky.

The hardiest plants in my landscape are the volunteers.  Dropped from the pelts or the poop of coyotes or bobcats or javelina, remnants of bird excrement or discarded cuttings which have blown out of the recycle pile, these random arrivals find just the place to make themselves comfortable, and they do.  This teddy bear cholla landed next to the hesperaloe and its irrigation and is doing just fine, as you can see:

But right now, the desert is putting on its own show.  Without benefit of rain or warm temperatures, our trees and our cacti are doing their best to remind us of why we live here. 

They start small and tight

and they are very teeny at the ends of the branches

and don't last very long and end up on the ground, spreading yellow flecks of loveliness as they wait to shrivel and die

And they are yellow.  The palo verdes, which get their name from their very green trunks

come first, and their yellow is paler than that of the mesquite and acacia which will follow them in the next few weeks.  Recovering from record breaking cold spells and an unusually dry winter rainy season, the flora are magnificent in their resilience and their tenacity.  These have all survived the winter with no care at all.  No water.  No protective covering.  No fertilizer.  And here they are:

Bring it on.  We can take it.  They inspire me.