Anti-erosion-mix Tract

Bare soil? Stay calm. Do not panic. Be assured that the opposite can be a lot worse.

Think how clean the GV once was during the endless diversity months from June through September, with all the spring’s output of flowers and leaves and seeds reduced to a thin dusting of crumbs on the baked flats from horizon to horizon, kicked up now and then and booted around by dust devils. Ahh, that baked silent mirage-world, dead as a bone but not long to wait before the miracle comes round again. But the miracle depends on the bare ground (explain?). 

And then there are those bare slopes, thanks to landslides or, most often these days, bulldozers. Often the best or even only refuge for beleaguered native flowering plants. 

And the bare ground scoured out by high water, in the form of gravel- or sand-bars or silt. ANd the bare mud left by receding rainwater in vernal pools and seasonal marshes and even stock ponds, each home to a different array of spring- or summer-flowering plants and all the other life they harbor.