It's Friday!

For Tanya's fun Willy Nilly Friday Five!  Join us!
Remember this photo from a few posts back...the saguaro skeleton on the left, embedded in its nurse tree, is the focus this time, because I wanted to show anyone who is interested what the saguaros look like as they die.  You can obviously see a healthy one on the right, but the skeleton of the perhaps more than one hundred or even two hundred year old cactus, stands broken on the left, part of the rotting body of another cactus beside it.  The little tree, perhaps a mesquite, shaded the baby saguaros when they were very small, for perhaps the first fifty years.  Click on these photos to enlarge and get a closer view.

As a saguaro rots, the hole bored into it by a woodpecker to make a small burrow inside can look like this...

Eventually the skeleton may fall and lay on the desert floor.  It is dry now, with woody ribs.  The outer flesh is gone.

Living in the Sonoran Desert is fascinating.  There is much of interest in this environment.  There are hundreds of living species (mammals down to insects, with plenty of reptiles as well) living here. We even have raccoons, though I've never seen one here! :-)  Someone asked in their comment on another post if the cactus fruit is edible.  Yes!  Many of them are, and you can even eat the fleshy pads of the prickly pear plant, and the flowers of the yucca.  The fruit that will appear in a couple of months after the saguaros bloom (we are coming into the saguaro flowering time!) have always been harvested by the Tohono O'Odham Indians here, and a fermented drink made from them to use as part of their rain ceremony.  Soon after will come the monsoons.  I enjoy learning about edible plants in every environment, and there are definitely fascinating ones to learn about here in the desert!

Here are five more from the list:

1.
If I were a body part I’d be hands that help and comfort and heal, and work at the things I love.  My daughter remembers me stroking her forehead and hair as she lay her head in my lap when she was a child.  A mother's touch is priceless, I think.

2. 

If I were a song I’d  be How Great Thou Art!

3. 
If I were a bird I’d be a hummingbird...maybe a really fancy one from South America with a long tail and head-dress in bright colors!

4.

If I were a gift I’d be something huge and expensive that would surprise the recipient with overwhelming joy!  Like an airplane for my hubby, or a house for my kids!

5.

If I were a city I’d be a small historic town, not a big bustling modern city...something like Jamestowne in the late 18th century, or a settlers town still east of the Mississippi.  

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Mom's book is now available on kindle...if you've been waiting to get it in that format, click on my link on my blog to check out how to order!  You get it from Amazon.

Have a wonderful weekend!