Sonoran Green Stick Blossom Festival

Palo verde (green stick) is one of several pea family members that thrive in the Sonoran Desert. (The others include mesquite, acacia and Mexican bird of paradise.)

One variety of the palo verde, the blue (because there's more blue in its green), is the Arizona state tree.

Thanks to legislators with knuckle-head priorities, Arizona also has a state gun, the Colt single action army revolver. Hey, in Arizona, even Democrats own pistols and ride horses.

Native to the Sonoran Desert, the palo verde blossoms in spring. Golden flowers cover its sparse, green branches. When they fall, it's like a gentle shower of spinning gold flakes dancing with the sunbeams.

The flowers attract swarms of bees, their loud hum beginning at sunrise. I don't hassle them. They are busy with their work, gathering and pollenating.

The blossoms make a bright yellow carpet over ground, walkways and shrubs. You see blossoms playfully impaled on saguaro spines.

This spring, the green stick blossom festival has been particularly spectacular. The rain we had last December encouraged a lot of flowers.

Japanese art film directors love to show blooming cherry and plum trees, their blossoms falling like rain. Here in Tucson, it's a gentle, golden rain of palo verde blossoms.

Only the festival is better here because we can eat the fruit. We have one up on the Japanese merely flowering fruit trees. The peas of the palo verde are edible, and thanks to the bees, bugs and birds, plentiful.

They are small and a bit time consuming to shell, but even raw, they are incredibly mild flavored. A quick saute in butter and hmmmmm.