DESERT EYE CANDY

The Sonoran Desert is an intriguing place to live year round. Unlike the snowbirds who come to enjoy the glorious weather from October to May, there are many "Boilers" who call this home year round regardless of the triple digit temperatures during the second of two seasons. So on this August morning as I leave the house for work I am "gifted" with this amazing eye candy across the street. This menacing looking cactus that stands taller than my 5' 3" has produced, overnight, these luscious blooms that are larger than a human hand. The universe in her magical and humorous way has created this juxtaposition of sharp and rigid with soft and feathery.

To say that my spirit has grown weary of the parched, dry wind that is reminiscent of an open oven door on Thanksgiving Day (my daughter's words on her first visit here) is most likely an understatement as I begin my 8th year here. I find more days than not the increasing longing for gentle rain and the pungent, earthy fragrance of the deep woods. I dream of walking barefoot in real grass (not the golf course kind!) and feeling that cool, dewy sensation that I never tired of all those years on the East coast. And peonies, lilac, and lily of the valley. I miss the weeping cherry that my husband and children presented to me on one Mother's Day after repeated requests for such a beauty. And just when I think I might not be able to bear another day that burns my fair skin or makes my eyes feel like they just might fry...I am gifted with this glorious, eye candy. And those few moments of bliss, now captured forever, refresh my spirit and I am thankful and able to BE...and open that gratitude door that most obviously had been closed. And once you reopen that door it's like a floodgate or an illumination on everything you have to be grateful for. Your heart is open and soft and ready to remember all that is good in your life. From rigid and sharp to soft and open. What a truly amazing, creative, universe. What a beautiful gift!