More important as a food crop than the pretty yellow bell lily …

…is desert parsley. She’s cream-coloured…

… with short flower stalks, or tall ones…

… or purple, when still half-closed…

… or yellow …

… and a true gift from the Earth.

In effect, her ability to maintain human life means that she is human life in this place, even moreso than yellow bell or arrow leafed balsam root…

… or the first bare stalks of mariposa lily, marking them in yellow bell season so they can be found again in May.

That is human life in this grassland, too. That green cheatgrass you see in these images, however, is not.