This high desert is having a flower year, too, the first in over fifteen years! One Saturday afternoon, Scott and I took a drive into the foothills near Antelope Hill (our "back door," as we call it), to see what was blooming. It's rare to take a ride from homeand NOT see some antelope. Antelope are curious, and these three came close enough to see what we were doing before continuing east through the bitterbrush. When bitterbrush is in bloom, the world changes. The air is so heavily laden with perfume that one feels floaty, enchanted, magical. The branches are smothered in tiny five-petaled blossoms of creamy yellow, and the bees tending them are drunk with nectar. The scent lasts for two weeks in our foothills, during which time the wind brings drifts of sweetness, and a piercing odor like warmed honey seems to rise from the very ground. Have you seen a cartoon character so intent upon a scent that his feet lift and he flies through the air, his nose leading the way to the source of the scent? That's how I feel at bitterbrush time. Bitterbrush is beautiful, it provides essential winter food for deer and antelope, it holds the soil well, quail and doves nest in it, jackrabbits use it for cover for their new litters -- but it is the perfume that speaks to me every May.

Above, bitterbrush shows off a flower-covered branch, left. And right, Hooker's balsamroot spills its fernlike leaves and bright golden daisies everywhere, our desert's most common large wildflower.

The pale pink starry flowers of phlox hug the ground here and there. But lupine grows tall and rounded in the foothills. I will come back to this gentle hillside in a few weeks to collect seed so I can re-introduce lupine to Antelope Hill.

Above left, Beckwith's violet pops up from the grass. This shy violet is well worth a search! It looks like some muncher has taken a chomp out of this flower, perhaps a ground squirrel. Right, these little white daisies like open spaces between sagebrush.