Copper Mine Picture Cafe

The photographs in this exhibition had help from nature. In the spring of 2005, an abundance of rain triggered an explosion of wild- flowers. I didn't have to go far to find them. They were just down the road, at South Mountain Park in Phoenix.

The park's main entrance is a five minute drive from my house. As the weather cools, I often take long strolls through the foothills with Homer, my Old English sheepdog. From February through April of last year, I also made it a point to take my camera. There was a lot color and I wanted to capture it.

In some spots, tiny yellow blossoms banketed the lower slopes. I'm not sure what kind of flowers they were, but they gave the desert the look of an alpine meadow-with cactus.

In other places, brittle bush -after a summer of looking like a ball of dead sticks, had burst out with an almost manic display of cockeyed flowers. Then, on a trail well traveled by stable

horses, grew a solitary globe mallow, taking advantage of the generous rain to push out large buds the color of an Arizona sunset.

Some pictures, I admit, I took right in my own yard. The saguaro in back wasn't shy. Large white blossoms came out at night, and stayed throughout the day.

Not all photographs in the exhibition are of flowers. I took the picture of 100,000 - plus marchers - showing their support of immigrant rights-on a freelance assignment for the Arizona Capitol Times. They flowed peacefully from downtown Phoenix toward the state Capitol.

Viewed from afar, with nearly everybody wearing a white T-shirt, the gathering took on an abstract quality - a garden of humanity.

All told, these pictures represent my own escape into a desert of color. All it took was a little rain.