Where the Iron Horse meets the Carriage Horse

Paulden Flowers

Paulden Flowers
 

Life in a desert survives from rain to rain.

And the rains are never frequent enough.  We are in the midst of what meteorologists say may be a two decade long drought, beginning in the mid 1990's.  Rainfall throughout the intermountain west has been a fraction of historic averages.  Yet we do get some rain and snow.  Life survives and waits for the rains to return.

Occasionally, even in the midst of a drought, the heavens bring forth their bounty.  And the lands respond.  Such an occurrence happened in the fall of the year 2000 when a series of Pacific Ocean hurricanes lined up along the Gulf of California and sent storm after storm into western Arizona.  After the clouds finally parted, the Paulden area had received over four inches of rain in a two week period - almost a third of a normal year's total.  And these are not normal years.

Little did we know that when the spring of 2001 arrived, the earth would reward us with a bounty of beauty the likes of which is rarely seen.  Beginning in March, 2001, and lasting for almost two months, the desert brought forth a succession of flowers.  Initially blanketing the land with a carpet of blue, each plant in its turn burst forth, seeds waiting sometimes for years till the conditions were ready.  Wave after wave of color until finally in the heat of approaching summer, they died down.

There has been but a shadow of that display before or since.

We hope you enjoy this selection from the beauty of that spring.

A break in the drought

Even in the longest lasting droughts, weather records show there are years of abundent rain, and the desert southwest shared in one of those periods during the fall of 2004 and winter of 2005.  Since October, 2004 until the next spring, we received over 14 inches of rain, more than a full year's worth in six months. The Big Chino wash ran in full for much of the time and was in flood several times, being almost a half mile wide near us.

We discovered that when the Big Chino wash was going over its banks we could begin to see it from our house.  We learned to judge the size of the flooding quite well from the width of the water's path a half mike from here.	Sullivan Lake is formed by a dam on the Big Chino and is where the wash changes name to the Verde River.  During our floods, water backed up from the dam and under the bridge on SR89 to form what we called "Lake Paulden".  From the dam, waters stretched upstream over two miles.

The anticipated spring growth did not disappoint as the valley bottom is covered with a lush green.  In our area, fields of blue wildflowers grew so thickly, that Mary Jane could not drive her carriage through.  Peter had to mow her dressage and cones courses, which itself make them look like the green lawns of the wetter climates. 

As they say, "were it not for a lack of rain, Arizona would be a tropic jungle".

Because the growth was so thick, it did not leave room for the profusion of wild flowers we saw above, but still the overall greeness of the land, highlighted with blues and yellows proved a delightful, if temporary, relief from the ongoing drought.

All low areas were covered by layers of purple flowering plants.  Starting at ground level to these tall, knee high plants,different plants yielded tiers of slightly varying colors of wine to violet flowers.	The house was set in fields of green and violet, later to be joined by even taller wild mustard flowers.

By May, much of the tall massing of purple and yellow flowers are fading.  Soon the heat will turn them brown and color will be but a memory come summer.  But although not nearly as varied as our earlier display, the May warmth did bring more color. Rather than occupying the lower, wetter portions of the land, these are blooming in the sandy hills and slopes.

Individually they are tiny, but in the higher areas they clustered to form an airy whiteness to the slopes.	Each flower is like a tiny daisy, but not a half inch across

Poppies are not common in our area.  But for some reason, there seem to be a few more each year, and this year's rains yielded patches of Mexican yellow poppies in several areas.	For some reason, a selecct few poppies turn out to be a golden orange, almost Daylight Orange in color.  I wonder if the Southern Pacific - - -

In the highest areas more miniature flowers dominate, here it is the place for yellow.

And the flowers of 2005 continued to amaze us.  Rather than browning out with the heat of summer, it just spawned a new wave of color surrounding us.  And that color lasted until the chill of early fall finally returned the land to its more common shades of brown.  But these memories will have last until the next burst of life on the high desert.

Finally, look at the photo of "Lake Paulden" up above.  The waters gave us acres of sunflowers this summer in addition to those which typically line the roads.  In fact, we even had sunflowers on our place for the first time ever.

This is the same view as of the winter's lake.

And this is the view from Highway 89 as you head south from Paulden and cross the Big Chino wash.

  Home   Paulden   About Us   Trains   Horses

Peter & Mary Jane Atonna
Paulden, Arizona