Last week I drove into Edgewood, the town that is in the flats to the east of where I live. Edgewood and Albuquerque are equidistant from my house in the Sandia Mountains, and while Albuquerque may have a greater selection of stores, Edgewood has that small town, welcoming feel that is balm to my soul. It's also the town in which I finished my teaching career. I was spent four years teaching language arts and social studies at Edgewood Middle School, and coaching cross country and track.
This trip was so I could buy groceries for the upcoming 4th of July holiday and weekend, but it also gave me a chance to run on my old cross country course, which wandered through the high desert just west of the school. The 3.2 mile course runs through a huge stand of cholla cacti. Some of them are 6 or 7 feet high and ten feet across, so it's almost like running through a forest. The cholla were covered with brilliant pink blooms.
Lower to the ground, prickly pear cactus also sported their summer flowers. It's always struck me as strange that these flowers are a beautiful, translucent yellow, because the juice from a prickly pear is bright pink -- very similar to the color of cholla flowers. If you've never had prickly pear jelly, you're missing out!
A couple of times, it seemed that the air was full of the buzzing of bees. I finally slowed down and tried to figure out where the buzzing was coming from. There were bees visiting the cholla and prickly pear blossoms, but I soon discovered that most of them were underfoot. These were ground dwelling bees!
I hadn't ever known before that there was such a thing, but apparently there are hundreds of different kinds of bees that live in New Mexico, and many of them are ground dwellers. Click here to learn more about them. I don't know whether the ones I saw are digger bees, miner bees, or cactus bees, but it was a pleasure to see them.
The desert might look deserted, especially on a warm summer day, but it is still alive and full of beauty.
The desert might look deserted, especially on a warm summer day, but it is still alive and full of beauty.
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