I am now in the middle of my fourth month at the Springs Preserve in Las Vegas, NV and things are starting to really pick up! For months my coworker and I have quietly witnessed the desert come to life.  The flowers, though they were sometimes few and far between, have come and gone.  Normally I would say that the best part is over, but not this season!  For me, a participant in the Seeds of Success program, spent flowers are an exciting sign.   It’s seed time here in the Mojave and I have been having a great time collecting native seed over the past couple weeks.  Most recently we made a collection of Fallugia paradoxa, the Apache Plume.  One of the most satisfying things is getting to pluck seed heads from a plant and say “Twenty! Forty! Sixty!…One Hundred!”  Some collections are slower than others and at times the work can seem tedious, but collections like the Fallugia help keep the work balanced.  I am looking forward to a little bit of scrambling over the next few weeks as we jump from one collection to another.  After a long, patient wait, it’s go time.

Allison Clark

Springs Preserve, Las Vegas, NV