"A"merican Old West - Tumbleweed at its best

My blogger friend Starshine is doing a fun thing this month where she does a blog a day and each title begins with a different letter of the alphabet. I thought this would be fun to try even though for my first entry I really want to write about tumbleweed which doesn't begin with the letter A at all. The technical name for tumbleweed is Salsola which again doesn't start with an A. It's a stretch, but we are going to go with "American Old West - Tumbleweed at its best." American -A ...it's going to count.

While living in West Texas the past 2 months, I've been introduced to many climate differences and vegetation that I never really knew existed. Last week we had a dust storm. The sky was a muddy brown. The wind was blowing hard. You crunched down your teeth and heard the dreaded crunchy sound of dirt between your pearly whites.

My favorite new thing by far, though, is the tumbleweed. For most, this crazy plant thing is found only in Western movies tumbling along right before a big duel. Camera scans to the good guy with his hand getting ready to pull out his gun. Scan camera to bad guy looking menacing. The music gets intense. A tumbleweed rolls about in the distance.

That was my version of it at least. When I moved to Lubbock, it became so much more. Nothing is more entertaining to me than to be driving along and to watch a real life tumbleweed literally tumble across the street in front of me. You can't try to avoid them because at times there are too many and you would end up hitting another car instead. They range in sizes from a basketball to the size of a car. I'm intrigued by them

I've always wondered what they really are, so I went to trusty Wikipedia to check out what they had to say. Here is the article, but I'll leave you with this...ever need a creative ingredient for your next salad? Go with the tumbleweed!