[ Hi there ! ]
[ I'm a baryte from Lake Thunderbird (The States, yeah) ]
[ I 'm a rose, not a red one... But more special... ]
[ Rose? No, not pink... ]
[ Better is to refer to me as an 'agglomerate' ]
[ I'm not alone, I have lot's and lot's of brothers and sisters... So, It's really cool that I have been chosen for this photo session! ]
[ Do you think I look like a rose? A rose is a royal flower, so that's fine for me, but the comparison with a rose is strange since I don't smell like one and I don't  grow on a plant or in a garden. However, I once grew, and grew... until someone picked me up, and now I'm here telling my story...  For a baryte I'm a strange girl  you know, since I'm a floater. You could call me a rose floater or a picked rose. Naaa... I would like to be called an agglomerate. That's what makes me special and is deed inside me. I was formed in a sandy area that is nowadays known as Lake Thunderbird. I still remember my early beginning. Baryte agglomerated with some red coloured quartz grains (people call that sand) and started to form my inner me, my beginning, the essence. After agglomerating with neighbouring quartz grains (we had a lot of fun together) for years, decades, centuries and eras I became what I am now. I have some distant colleagues in far deserts which look quite the same and were created the same way I was. However, instead of baryte they were created from gypsum or coelestine. They are called Desert Rose, you might know them... yeah, I know....again rose...have you ever seen a rose flowering in the desert? Well I didn't because I was always covered with sand. Anyway, to be rose or not to be rose, I think I'm cool because I look different from my other baryte colleagues which are transparent. These guys completely show their inner them, I prefer to stay non-transparent as I always was and keep some little secrets for myself... ]