sagebrush flowers

There are several varieties of sagebrush across the Northwest; the bush pictured here is along the Columbia River near Vantage, WA, and I think it might be Artemisia rigida, going mostly by its similarity to Google image search results. The flowers are usually more colorful than this, so these may be a bit past their prime, I think. I don't live in sagebrush country myself and it's not a subject I know all that much about. I came across an interesting blog post about sagebrush ecosystems that explains the web of species that depend on sagebrush habitat, and details various threats to this habitat, including agriculture and invasive species.

Incidentally, one of the more charismatic species that relies on sagebrush habitat is the adorable pygmy rabbit. They've come up here once before, in an early blog post from March 2006, in case you were curious about either pygmy rabbits, or early blog posts of mine. I don't really do blog posts of the "Here's a jumble of random stuff with a vague theme" variety anymore. That sort of thing tends to go to Twitter now instead. Where, quite honestly, it has a much wider audience than it would on this humblest of humble blogs here. Twitter's probably the right place for it anyway, given how ephemeral the interwebs can be. More than once I've gone back to look at an old jumble-of-knicknacks-and-whatnots post, only to realize the majority of links are now broken. And then I realize the post in question went up seven years ago (!!!) and it's not a huge surprise for a few web addresses to come and go in that amount of time. And then I realize this blog is actually pretty old in internet years. And then I feel very, very old myself. Sigh.