A DESERT BUFFET

 We are very fortunate to have right off our patio a beautiful saguaro. Because she has such well-placed arms and very few flaws we have called her Belle. She tells me when to get up as her shape appears through my bedroom window, as daylight arrives.

 

 

                                                            Belle with the rising moon.

 

                                                            Belle with the rainbow
 

As you can see Belle likes to be included in any desert event especially with visitors.

                                                            Belle with two of our boys

Belle didn't bloom last year but she certainly made up for it this year with her abundance of blooms on every arm. Having no experience with how often and how profusely saguaro bloom I would have said that this was a bumper year. After all it was a super bloom of wildflowers in the spring so why not a super bloom of saguaros. The answer to that is, whereas wildflowers do need a good rainfall to trigger blooming saguaro store so much water in their trunks they do not need a good monsoon and wet winter to bloom. Yet every saguaro around was covered with blooms this year.

Of course, we missed Belle blooming, and all the other saguaros, because we were gone for 6 weeks from mid May. This was an earlier flowering one I saw before we left. As we departed I had just begun to see little pips at the very top. The flowers on the saguaro are ephemeral often opening in the evening and gone by the end of the next day. On our return flowering was over and the fruit had formed. They have a job to do making and ripening their fruits quickly before it gets too hot. The ripe fruits are called bahidaj. 

 

Within days of our return bright pink started to show as the fruits split open to expose the succulent cherry red flesh and thousands of black seeds. It is an open invitation for birds to feast.

Birds have been busy eating the flesh and seeds.

The Tohono O'odham(Desert people) who lived in the Sonoran desert for centuries harvest the fruit, as their ancestors did before them for hundreds of years. They pull the fruit using a dried saguaro rib with a small grease wood stick or catclaw attached to the top to form a hook. Each fruit is opened and the flesh and seeds collected. A small piece from the first fruit is rubbed over their heart to bless the fruit and the empty seed pod laid on the ground facing the sun. This is to ask for monsoon rains to come which will ensure the fruit for next year. Water is added to the pot of fruit and boiled down and strained to form a syrup which they enjoy during winter. The remaining pulp and seeds are dried and ground to use in cooking. 

As for our fruits we sit and watch as white-winged doves, goldfinches, cactus wrens, curve-billed thrashers, towhees and cardinals come to feast at the buffet.