What's in the Desert?

The flower stalks drooped down like streamers, rattling in the wind against the half-burned miniskirts of old fronds. Gary Paul Nabhan wrote that in Gathering the Desert. Like Nabhan, I always loved the palm skirts. Living in California for 17 years, I noticed one year high up in a palm tree in my front yard a white owl (snow owl) living. I would see its ghostly flight at night sometimes but found its pellets or undigested waste of bones and fur below the palm tree more often. That owl ruled that palm roost.

It seems that Gathering the Desert by Gary Paul Nabhan (with excellent illustrations by Paul Mirocha; see Mirocha's palm drawing to right) has begun. We'll talk about why the creosote bush resprouted after a thermonuclear blast in the desert. We'll talk about male and female grasshoppers that mimic their host plant, the "greasewood" (another name for creosote bush). We'll talk about the lore, legend and factuality of the medicinal qualities of "the little stinker" (also another name for creosote bush). We'll talk about the sandfood or sandroot plant, a parasitic perennial, or mesquite and cacti providing "the staff of life" in the desert. Perhaps we'll get to the palm tree and its capacity for abundant water storage around its shallow roots.

Stone Cup Cafe at 8:30 a.m. today.