Photo Gallery Archives - Macska Moksha Press

Spring Wildflowers in New Mexico: Photos and botanical fun facts

March 31, 2026 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

I had hoped to travel to southern California this year for the spectacular wildflower bloom, but I was delayed by illness and then discouraged by the high gas prices that followed. Fortunately for me, autumn and winter rains were plentiful here in the upper Gila River valley of southwestern New Mexico, so there is an enjoyable variety of flowering plants here, including ones I haven’t met before. The format here is borrowed from my website, Wildflowers of Joshua Tree Country, an online botanical guide to some of the flora of the Mojave Desert, and I have raided the text when it fit here too. I also have to shout out two very useful websites: 1) California Plant Names: Latin and Greek Meanings and Derivations—An Annotated Dictionary of Botanical and Biographical Etymology compiled by Michael L. Charters, which is an impressive labor of love. 2) Daniel Moerman’s Native American Ethnobotany Database, which is also available in book form, and is even more impressive.

I took multiple photos of most of these plants. If you’d like to see more, check out my observations on iNaturalist.

I believe nature literacy is more important than ever in our screen-centric society, so I hope this on-screen presentation encourages you to get out and look at what’s blooming in your own corner of the world, wherever you are. Not just to “touch grass” but to ID it, demystify its scientific name, find out how humans and more-than-humans alike interact with it, and discover your own feelings for it.

Arizona Phacelia (Phacelia arizonica)

Life cycle: Annual herb

Family: Borage (Boraginaceae)

Also known as: Arizona Scorpionweed, Caterpillar Weed. “Scorpionweed” refers to the curled up inflorescence, shaped somewhat like a Scorpion’s stinger.

Translation: “Phacelia” is Greek for “a cluster,” which describes the crowded flowers in many species of this genus; “arizonica” is just Arizona, where it is prevalent.

Ethnobotany: Native Americans used various species of Phacelia medicinally, but I couldn’t find information about this species.

Ecological associations: Pollinated primarily by bees, including Bumblebees, Sweat Bees, and Mason Bees. Butterflies also feed on its nectar.

Notes: Some species can cause contact dermatitis when handled. I saw this one most thickly on an overgrazed cow pasture where cows haven’t been for a couple years, and also by the river within the historically flooded zone.

My feelings: I love this whole genus, who I first met in the Mojave Desert, where there are many species. Though this one was new to me here in the Gila, I immediately recognized its genus.

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Checkerblooms, Globemallows, Beardtongues & more

November 11, 2025 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Favorite plant pics from my summer in Colorado

Western Blue Flag (Iris missouriensis), Ridgway, June 11th

As I mentioned in a recent post, I spent the summer working on a farm on Colorado’s Western Slope this year. I often went camping or hiking on my weekends (Wednesdays and Thursdays at my request, to avoid the crowds) and my primary interest was plants, especially whatever happened to be blooming at the moment.

If I try to do ID-to-species-level on the spot, I use an offline app that allows you to browse candidates by characteristic. If you know family or genus, you can also enter that to further narrow down your search. It’s basically a field guide in app form. Wildflower Search is the company that makes it, and they put out versions by state. It’s free and I highly recommend downloading the ones that apply to your region.

Autumn in The Gila, 3 of 3: Insects (& one fish)

November 4, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Queen butterfly (Danaus gillipus). Closely related to the Monarch.

This is part 3 of a 3 part series. See part 1: Trees and part 2: Wildflowers. I took all these photos in the upper Gila River valley in southwestern New Mexico.

Autumn in The Gila, 2 of 3: Wildflowers

November 2, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Spear Globemallow (Sphaeralcea hastulata)

This is part 2 of a 3 part series. See part 1: Trees. I took all these photos in the upper Gila River valley in southwestern New Mexico.

Autumn in The Gila, 1 of 3: Trees

October 31, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Inverted photograph from a pond at the Nature Conservancy plot down the road

It’s a really buzzy time because of the US elections, so rather than putting out some writing that’ll just get lost in the noise, I’m offering a 3-part series of photos. I had originally planned just one post, but have been taking so many pictures, I broke it into sections: Trees, Wildflowers and Insects.

I’m currently staying at a friend’s rural property in the upper Gila River valley in southwestern New Mexico. If anyplace can be said to be the home-base in my nomadic existence, this is it. It’s in a remote, sparsely populated location. The pavement ends a mile further down, and the road dead-ends entirely a couple miles later at a campground in the Gila National Forest. From there you can be hiking in the Gila Wilderness in just a few minutes. Also down the road is an old farm owned by the Nature Conservancy where they’re doing passive restoration, where I take walks regularly. It’s also chill enough around here that you can just take off across the pastures to get to the river and nobody pays any mind.

So I’m blessed with a lot of space to explore, full of plants and other creatures, and I’ve been carrying my camera with me so I can share what I find. I hope you enjoy this 3-part visual offering of the more-than-human world.

Postcard from the Grand Mesa

August 2, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

View west from the Grand Mesa

In mid-August, I met up with Nikki Hill at a trailhead on the Grand Mesa. She was there to scope out sites for the field course she’s teaching next week, on Human-Landscape Relationships, Ecology, & Ethnobotany. Summer wildflowers were blooming and berries were coming on. Within earshot of our camp, a fork of Kannah Creek was babbling over the rocks on its journey down into the valley below. Birds and chipmunks twittered and squeaked. No traffic noises except the occasional passing car on the nearby gravel road. No light pollution but a few twinkling lights on ranches in the valley. Fresh air, scattered clouds, and lovely overnight temps. A truly idyllic spot.

But the star of the show was the view. In the far distance were the peaks of the La Sals range, over 100 miles away as the crow flies, in Utah. Below was the Grand Valley, which is part desert, part irrigated agriculture. On the other side of the Valley, and extending to the horizon, were the tumbled ridges and deeply cleft canyons of the Uncompahgre Plateau. The vista is startling in its expansiveness, like little else I’ve seen before. The sense of space is so vast, it almost feels like being at the ocean.

The rough terrain of the Uncompahgre Plateau was especially evident in the morning light:

View of Uncompahgre Plateau from the Grand Mesa

Springtime in northern California: photos

March 25, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Milkmaids (Cardamine californica), a lover of disturbed places. I've seen it only along the roadside and nowhere else

Salmon River on left, flowing into the Klamath, right, whose flow is from bottom to top in this photo.

2023 Photos: “Artsy” — for Joanna Pocock

December 19, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

I exited social media early in 2023, and while my quality of life in general improved, I did miss a small number of people who I interacted with there. One of them is Joanna Pocock, a British author who I interviewed on my podcast twice (here and here), and who posted photos to her Instagram that I truly appreciated. She has a great eye for composition and her work is really worth looking at closely. Occasionally I posted my own photos especially for her. Some were call-outs to her subject matter, which often included scenes of urbanity and decay, and others were simply my attempts at creative arrangement I thought she would dig.

Had I still been on Instagram this year, I would have tagged Joanna on most of these. Some were taken specifically for her (many of the black and whites), and others jumped out at me as I reviewed this year’s roll. Someday I hope to take a walk around London with Joanna, taking pictures together, but in the meantime, I have these to share. They are arranged in order by date, from earliest to latest. Enjoy!

“Home” as a Season, Not a Place

May 26, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Painted Lady butterfly, bg: California Poppies

The other day (May 24, 2019), I saw a Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) near the town of Dinsmore, California. That’s in the northeast corner of Humboldt County, near the Trinity County line, just off the 36, on the edge of Six Rivers National Forest. The terrain is hilly, fairly steep and treed with Firs and Oaks of various species. Though this spot was only a little over 50 miles from the 101 to the west, it takes close to an hour and a half to drive there, due to tight curves and steep climbs. It’s out in the boonies for sure.

The butterfly had seen better days. One of their lower wings was over half gone and the others a bit raggedy-edged. Earlier this year, in southern California—specifically in Anza-Borrego State Park—I had seen thousands of them every day for weeks. There had been a bigger-than-usual migration (see here, here and here). For awhile there, I couldn’t drive anywhere without my windshield getting streaked with yellow and my grill filling up with dead bodies. Try as I might, it just wasn’t possible to avoid hitting them, there were so many. I felt a little less bad about it one day when I came out of a store and saw a couple of small birds on my bumper, gorging on the corpses.

Other times, sitting in the desert, a cloud of them would pass through, literally hundreds a minute, alighting on the many, many flowers and passing on. (A “superbloom” was in effect too.) For as many as there were, it was tricky to get good photos. They were shy of close human presence and never landed in one place for long. What I had to do was a pick a good spot and sit still with my camera turned on and pointed, waiting for one to flutter within focusing distance.
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#WeedsArePeopleToo: Springtime reflections on farming & its damages

May 3, 2019 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale)

I woke the other morning to the staccato sound of a Woodpecker pecking. He (I am guessing, based on appearance) was tap-tap-tapping on a dead branch on a nearby Oak. The rhythmic noise was not disturbing, even first thing upon waking, because I had been observing and appreciating this bird and his habits for the last few days on this particular tree. But the vibration also brought me sadness, as I knew the tree was not much longer for the world, and was in fact scheduled to be cut down that very day. Why? Such is agriculture. Read on…
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Arizona Phacelia (Phacelia arizonica)

Favorite plant pics from my summer in Colorado