SPRING IS HERE

Spring is Here By Virginia Duncan

EASTER on the Arizona desert not only puts on a dress parade, but brings with it a miracle that is exquisitely symbolic of the Resurrection. Right on places that have remained desolate for months during summer, fall and winter, spring rains will work their magic and Life re-appears in gorgeous array. Flowers of every conceivable type and color -not just the famed cacti-will be showing where nothing grew a few weeks ago. Late winter rains this season give promise of particularly good Easter flowers, and desert lovers are living in keen anticipation.

In the east or elsewhere in generously watered regions, spring flowers are an expected thing. But the dictionary, backed by popular opinion which knows Arizona only through florid fiction, implies and even states that the "desert" is utterly barren, dry sand where nothing will grow.

This is an entirely erroneous impression, utterly without foundation. Beauty, extraordinary beauty, is on the desert every hour of the year, but when a little rain falls in early springtime this beauty becomes a living, vibrant thing.

Blossoms as large as salad plates (this is no exaggeration) will suddenly lie revealed in the brilliant sunshine. The leafless saguaro cactus will bestir itself for a blooming; the ocotillo will begin to tip itself with flame; the hedgehog and the bisnaga and the staghorn and the prickly pear and others of the lesser cactus grouping will compete in this natural flower show. And under foot all the while will be an indescribable array!

Harold Bell Wright, who built a fine desert home in Arizona and who keeps a residence in California as well, says that nowhere else in America is there such generous assortment of Easter and spring flowers as on the "barren" desert soil. Mr. Wright, a cactus lover, has written of this subject himself, as well as writing the many novels that have made him famous.

"At times it is impossible for me to put my foot down," he said, "without crushing desert flowers. They literally carpet the earth. For miles and miles the flats and hill slopes will be painted golden by the poppies, touched here and there by blossoms of other hues."

Most extraordinary and most appealing of all the desert flowers perhaps is that shy specimen called "La Reina de la Noche," the Queen of The Night.

This exquisite thing is a cereus. For months its leafless stalk will be a crooked gray stick, apparently dead, protruding maybe from some crevice in the rocks or sheltered by the more aggressive prickly pear. It will scarcely be visible at all.

In time, though, it will put out a few buds, of negligible interest. Then late one afternoon the miracle occurs!

With no warning, whatsoever, the buds begin to swell. By sundown they are opening. By 10 p. m. the cereus is in full, incomparably beautiful bloom-its waxen white blossoms as wide as saucers, giving off a delicate, exotic fragrance which can be detected half a mile away.

By dawn, the blossom will have drooped noticeably, and by noon next day they will be withered and gone. That is one of the odd things this night-blooming cereus blooms only at night without warning, and on only one night in a year. But for that one night it is truly glorious. Small wonder that the hobbyists love it, and that the flower has come to occupy a high position in the Mexicans' legend of love.

There is a legend which says a beautiful senorita persistently refused the advance of her lover-until he came one night serenading and bringing an exquisite new flower. He sent the flower in to her by a servant, and strummed his guitar under her grilled window to sing: She eventually came onto her balcony and told him, "Don Francisco, many men have come serenading under my window, but only you have brought a flower of such delicate charm. Such a man can have only love and kindness in his heart, and if you now want me I am yours." (Turn to Page 28)