Waddell, Arizona

This morning Lynn and I headed to the White Tank Mountains Regional Park for the weekly Wildflower Wednesday hike. Cindy, our hiking guide, led a large group of newbies interested in learning about desert flora. About a month ago, we went on the first hike. There were few wildflowers in sight. Today there were quite a few, but I expect many more will appear in the next week or two. The opening image is one of my favorite wildflowers, the Globe Mallow.

Today’s post is an extra, written especially for today as it’s an anniversary for Journeys with Johnbo. Two years ago today, I posted my first Journey. Since then, Journeys has attracted 275 followers and over 18,000 views. I have enjoyed the time traveling, taking photos and putting each collection of photos together for posting. The image above is of one of the more common plants here in the Arizona desert. The creosote plant blossoms with many small yellow flowers. According to Cindy, the plant is very long lived, and there are specimens that are over 10,000 years of age.

An interesting parasite on the creosote plant is the gall midge. The midge creates this little ball that Native Americans in the area discovered made a great pipe filling for their smoking pleasure. Doing a Google search on the term gave me far more information on this pest than I am really interested in learning. I leave it to you, dear reader, to check out the details yourself, if you are so inclined.

To all my followers, thanks for sticking with me the last couple of years. I hope to continue traveling and sharing my images. As a gesture of my sincerity, I submit a small gallery of wildflowers seen on today’s Wildflower Wednesday hike.

John Steiner