Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California.

Now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

It is nighttime in the Mojave.

Finally.

And no thanks to daylight savings time it is night time and all the beautiful flowers have folded up for the night and they are growing just about everywhere now.

Maybe not the great orbits of color that attract the great snaking lines of cars.

The cars parked haphazardly on the roadside, tourists tumbling out, and the most remarkable outfits in the most enormous hats and

heavily decorated hats at that the wildflowers that i like the best are the ones that just kind of

creep up on you and you're walking preferably alone

without having to endure somebody talking about how beautiful it is.

I mean, we know it's beautiful.

That's why we're walking here instead of walking in the shadow of seagulls up at the landfill on Yucca Mesa.

Well, between a crop of silver-gray boulders washed and polished by the rains we've been having, you might see some fairly

tall violet flowers poking up from the happy little shrub they call home.

Each one with a golden yellow little disc in the middle flashing its color at you through the violet petals.

You know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Mojave Astor.

The ends of the petals get a little scraggly and wind blown within a few days of blooming.

And they remain that way for many weeks.

Increasingly battered by the winds, increasingly battered by events.

But holding strong,

holding strong on those long,

strong stems reaching up from the shrub,

...