SPRING SWINGS A MAGIC BRUSH

With its flat, leaf-like stems spreading over the ground and its big, dazzling yellow and orange flowers. You may have to take a side road into rocky places and stop the car to find the hedgehog cactus, but it's worth the extra miles. The big spiny ball looks for the world like a porcupine decorated with red Christmas candles! "All cacti illustrate the old adage, 'distance lends enchantment,' but if you must try to pot a tiny specimen to send to the friend back east, there is a special technique. Kick the plant out of the ground with the toe of your shoe and pick it up by its roots, which, fortunately, are spineless. It's easier on gloves, to say nothing of hands." Spring dampness buds out the yuccas, but there are yuccas and yuccas, as the spiny cactus, commonly called Spanish Dagger or Spanish Bayonet, grow from one corner of the state to the other. You have seen them in great forests, rolling in sweeps across the desert, canyon and mountain, sending flowering shoots sometimes eight and ten feet tall, and, as the flowers wither beneath a baking sun, the bayonets thrust themselves toward the great Heat Maker, in surly defiance. As this "mean" cactus, with its sharp spines, and ivory, white, or cream flowers, draws NATURE draws a vivid picture with paints of bright color as Spring, in all her gay raiment, moves into the lonely desert, and the silent, somber mountains of Arizona. your attention with its beauty, so also is the Indian attracted to the plant, but not to the flowers, for the roots of this plant, a distant cousin of the beautiful white Easter lily, when properly prepared and boiled, make good "soap" suds for washing the hands and body. But soap making wasn't all that the yucca meant to the early man of the southwest. Just as the white bell-shaped flowers, waving gently with every puff of wind, hold today faith and hope for travelers of the desert, so did the tall spikes, long before Columbus touched the West Indies, mean life itself for the pit house and early pueblo Indian. What hemp, leather, straw, wool, cotton, steel, the silk cocoon, wire, and soap mean to us, the yucca meant to the early fighters of desert and mountain. The early man cut the tall stock of the yucca with a sharp stone and drew out the long fibers. With these he twisted and matted the leaves, and a toeless covering for the soles of his feet was made. He made bags and baskets. He also made blankets and, by weaving in turkey feathers, provided a highly prized bed piece. We of the modern age have dubbed this old desert plant, so ably used by the Indian, "Candles of the Lord." The long shoots point heavenward, as though reaching toward the stars, and the heavy cup-shaped petals seem to be lit with a white brilliance. The air around these lovely waxen blossoms is heavy with a sweet, rich perfume which attracts the desert bees, butterflies and numerous insects in search of honey. Almost as common as the yucca is the much-branched, mustard-like plant that grows by the millions by the road-side, covered with countless pink-purple flowers, the Rocky Mountain bee-plant. Just because there is so much of it don't pass it up for a weed. It is beautiful, and useful, too. Ask Mrs. Honey Bee, if you don't think so. Or gather the shoots, boil, remove the woody parts, cook for hours until you have a black paste which when cool, hardens into a cake. Wrap and store until the price of soup bones goes soaring beyond your income, then bring it forth, soak it well and surprise the family! If you are artistic instead of practical, use it to make pigment for black pottery. Some Indians have done both.

Besides the bee-plant, Arizona's In(Continued on page 26)