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Flores de la Primavera

Flores de la Primavera

by Thad­deus Tripp Ressler

Spring in Mex­i­co, even in the moun­tains is a very warm affair. It’s only the begin­ning of April and already hit­ting the mid-eight­ies. A far sight from the sub-zero tem­per­a­tures I was deal­ing with just two months ago in Col­orado, though it’s cer­tain­ly just as dry. None of that seems to both­er the flow­ers though. There’s an explo­sion of col­or on the streets of Zacatlán.

Turn­ing a cor­ner can put you face to face with a Paper­flower bush hang­ing over walls or through a gate spilling into and over the side­walk mak­ing beau­ti­ful canopies of orange, pinks, reds, and pur­ples.

I found fer­al Fuch­sias grow­ing out of a cor­ner of a small church.
Gera­ni­ums in pink and red give lit­tle pops of col­or to bal­conies and win­dowsills.

I even saw a beau­ti­ful Chilean Jas­mine bloom in pink wind­ing it’s way up a stair­case.

High up in Popo­tuhuil­co, I found Red Hot Pok­ers bloom­ing, and wait­ing for hum­ming­birds.

Blue Lily’s bunched at the top of a tall stalk in a gar­den where a White Fox­glove was show­ing off a stack of blooms and   buds, two feet high.

But the most inter­est­ing to me is the Spiky Mex­i­can Prick­ly­pop­py. This thorny rel­a­tive to the this­tle has beau­ti­ful white or yel­low flow­ers, and seems to only grow in for­got­ten places.