Spring Wildflowers

I saw these on my walk this morning for the first time in the 13 years we've lived here.  Our wildflower book calls them Desert Evening Primrose.

It says that each flower blooms for only one night and then it will wither in the light of day.  But as the flowers dry, they turn pink and lavender making almost a bouquet on each plant.

I think it's astounding how they can grow in dry sandy soil.

The primrose are in a neighbor's yard.  We have Crane's Bill in ours, like we've never had it before.  The good news is that it's a ground cover of sorts and seems to have crowded out the nasty and highly flammable Tumble Mustard.  The bad news is that it's a sticker.  It's name comes from those spikes, because they look like the bill of a crane when held sideways.  However, each one of those spikes when it dries will produce four stickers.  Our poor dogs.

I also saw lupine for the first time this year.

We have a few Desert Peach, but where it normally punctuates the sagebrush landscape in May with splashes of pink, there is just a smattering.  The early spring weather last month followed by a week of killer frost was a game changer.  

I finished my laprobe from our Shetland wether Ollie.  I thought the brown was Shetland but it's something else, without the typical Shetland luster.  I was disappointed the light brown stripe so took it my guild meeting yesterday.  They suggested a closer sett or a thicker yarn, but they all liked it the way it is.  I have plenty more yarn where this came from :)  Our final meeting of the 2014-2015 guild year was a combination dye day and death by chocolate.  Oh my, did we have lots of both and you can read about it here.  

And I also finished the scarf from novelty yarn warp and plain weave weft.  It's nothing to write home about and I've decided in the future to use a yarn like this in combination with something else.  It would be a whole lot more interesting.  I'm already planning a mixed warp using Tom Knisely's method of designing in the reed.

I got this warp on Maudie Mae last week and have secured it on the breast beam with lease sticks using these fancy holders that Melissa gave me a long time ago.  I haven't used them in years and thought it was time to try them again.

I've decided to take a break from the studio for a couple of days.  I hung my sun catchers in the tree after breakfast and then cleaned out the flower bed a little.  We planted this bed over ten years ago when it was in full sun, but we have lost some of our sun-loving plants as the trees have grown and created shade.  I spent an hour on the front porch with my High County Gardens catalog and have made a list of plants to order tomorrow, xeric plants that tolerate partial shade and are also browse resistant to rabbits.   It took a while but I'm ready to place my order when they are open tomorrow.