Belated Birthday or After the Rain

July 26, 2015

On a prior post (see Birthday Bookends), I summarized our trip up to Mount Wrightston with a group of friends. This trip, just 8 days before the photos in this post were taken, was rained out.  Not in its entirety, because with did make the halfway point of the hike, but my original plan was to travel to the top of the mountain and have cake up there. 

We decided to make the trip up Mount Wrighston the following weekend (July 26).  We tend to make this trip often for multiple reasons.  One reason I repeat the same hike over and over is that it changes constantly and I always see new things. 

One week after our last trip, the rains that blocked us from completing my planned birthday celebration on the summit likely were a significant contributor to the carpets of wildflowers all over the slopes on the way to the summit. The rain, although a bit disappointing at the time, turned out to be a birthday gift as well, it just came a week later.  The flowers can't grow without the rainy days. 

I was impressed by both the individual beauty of the flowers and the wide diversity.  I tried to show as many varieties as possible.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 ...28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry"... Matthew 6. 

The camera is fairly good at focusing in on one flower.  It is not very capable of capturing the brilliance of a meadow full of a wide diversity of flowers. This is a classic case of the camera failing to be big enough.

Lots of bees, most of them were interested in us (with the exception of some of our more colorful clothing items).

The brilliance, diversity, and intensity of the actual scene fail to be reproduced in the above photo.

Not only was the mountain covered in wildflowers, but there was intense green everywhere.

This view from the summit shows the intense green of the foothills of the eastern Santa Rita mountain range in the foreground with greener than golf course  grass of Sonoita in the valley below.