The desert scrub isn’t always the most photogenic. I work to make it so, since it really is beautiful, but I feel I often have mixed results. But in the fall, the Rabbit Brush blooms and turns the desert bright yellow, a beautiful sight to everyone except those allergic to Rabbit Brush pollen.

Rabbits like to hide in these bushes, which I think is where they get the name. If I walk off the trail, flushing a rabbit by accident is pretty common. It happens often enough that I think there are two lines of defense: hide in the bramble and hope not to be detected; if that fails, sprint through the open spaces between shrubs, taking random turns to make them hard to follow.

We have jackrabbits here, with lonnnng ears, skinny torsos, and legs that look two sizes too large for them. Curiously, they remind me of the lowrider cars of East L.A., fitted with hydraulics that make them bounce high on demand.

I’ve been distracted from my retrospective by holiday weather and events. I hope you don’t mind. This photo returns me to the program and I hope finish the year out strong with some cloud photos I’ve been hanging on to.