This is a new one on us, though.
This is an interesting place. It’s really dark, but not in a bad way. Dotted about, out in the desert, are houses with home observatories; sky sheds taking advantage of the practically nonexistent light pollution and clear dry air.
Not only are there individual houses, there are entire communities devoted to night-sky-watching.
We’ve seen the space station go by at night. The big dipper is dominating the night sky. Well, the big dipper and the moon right now.
So what is it about stargazers? Do they keep a list of the stars they’ve seen and identified? They must. If they didn’t, how would they know who was winning?
And melons growing wild in the desert.
Native melons that thrive during the monsoon season.
They’re called coyote melons. Not something we’re likely to sample though. I read that they contain a chemical that is the bitterest substance known. Normally a plant like this would rely on animals eating the fruit and defecating the seeds some miles away to propagate the species. Animals that survive today won’t eat them though, so their seeds have to be scattered by wind and rain. Based on evidence from current day elephants and rhinoceros in Africa, and prehistoric remains in the southern United States, it’s thought that the fruit might have been appealing to mastodons in more ancient times.
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