desert spring wildflowers- get read to scroll!! (photo heavy!!)

a couple of weeks ago, I got up insanely early on a Saturday (insanely early for me on a weekend, anyway-- before the sun rose) and headed south to Picacho Peak State Park, about 1 1/2 hours south, on the way to Tucson. I wouldn't ordinarily do such a thing but I had heard reports on the news that the spring wildflower bloom was the best it had been in the past 10 years due to the rain and winter temps we've been having. So, I figured I could sleep later!! 

We'd been to this state park once before, in 2007, I think (?) to hike to the top, but this time, I was going to meander around, look at wildflowers, and hopefully get some good photos. I took over 700 in the time I was there; you'll have to tell me what you think of them!

(and by the way, as always, click on any of the photos to make them larger- and hopefully even more impressive!)

  Enjoy!!

7:30 am, the sun just hitting the north edge--
this is looking towards the "Sunset Vista Trail Head" I believe. 

looking south, towards the peak. The left-most tip is actually where the longest trail goes to.
(Hunter Trail: steep and twisting, difficult rating.)
You should have gloves, because you need to pull yourself up via steel cables in a few places.
(I didn't make it all the way to the top when we hiked it, but Tom did.)

Saguaro & 'nurse tree' ocotillo. Saguaros grow sheltered underneath or around another plant
or tree till they get big enough to handle the wind, sun, etc.  Eventually they will
outgrow the nurse tree, or even outlive them, in the case of a mesquite or Palo Verde.

I didn't see too many birds (I heard a few), except for a couple hummers--
they were quick, but I did snag a few (poor) photos. Not sure what kind
this guy is; the sun is on the wrong side of him to get a good look.

Saguaro forest in the morning sun-- isn't it magnificent?? (9:00 am)

desert lupine, close-up.

Saguaros in a field of California poppies and desert lupines

Desert globemallow, pink variety (I think). Usually these are orange-r than this,
but I think it's the same species. The flowers are small, about as big as a 50-cent piece.
Reminds me of hollyhocks. You can see these (bushy) plants along the highway, too.

Not a flower, but flower buds on some sort of cholla cactus.

too bad I was too early to see the flowers-- this cholla is just loaded with flower buds.

a scenic vista, looking southeast.
(actually, this state park is right off the interstate, so you can actually see traffic on I-10
from the park. The horizontal line in the background is the interstate.)

I really like this one.
At the left, you can see just a bit of a Saguaro
skeleton sticking up out of the brush.

gorgeous views-- my photo composition skills couldn't do them justice.

yup, it's what you think it is- a snail shell. In the desert.
I was off the marked trail a bit, heading down a dry wash that had
obviously held water at one time or another. (thankfully, there
was NO rain anywhere in the forecast that day.)

Standing in that wash, looking uphill... another Saguaro skeleton.

again, I couldn't do the scenery justice, but I quite like this one--
it says something to me about the 'renewal' of nature, with the ephemeral
wildflowers alongside the hundreds-of-years-old Saguaro skeleton.
(sappy?? maybe. probably.)

another view of the hillside.

I found GOLD!! (haha!! I couldn't resist.) isn't it gorgeous??

These poppies are delicate looking!!
(I'm sure they're tougher than they look,
though, to make it in the desert.)
It was a bit breezy, so they didn't want to stand still.

So, the marked hike I went on (then went off of) to take all these pictures was only miles long, lol!! It took me, oh, maybe, 4 hours to piddle around in, on, and around that trail, and I took 245 photos in that time. (of course, quite a few of them aren't worth anything, photographically speaking)

All this is to say, I have quite a few more photos to post yet, so check back again soon. I've printed quite a number, too, so I can make a few (okay, quite a few, lol!) scrapbook pages.

thanks for accompanying me on my wildflower walk!

home and family pics

just a few pics from the last couple weeks:

I know this pic is a bunch of tiny white blobs, but if you click
on it, you may be able to see that they're birds. 

with all the rain, the wash that goes through our neighborhood was flooded, and attracted plenty of birds-  I took these couple photos in the afternoon on my way home from work, but that morning when I drove past on my way to work, there were at least thirty of them out there. (I regret not stopping to take the photo then!)

a bit of a closer view

I believe they're cattle egrets, an 'uncommon visitor to the Sonoran Desert: the most likely place to see them is in an agricultural field during irrigation.' That about describes this area to a T! (except for the agricultural part, that is.) The water has since dried up, and the birds have moved on.

Tom and Lefty, our Saguaro cactus

It's been a while since we've measured our Saguaro, so we did it a couple weeks ago. Tom used the retractable metal measuring tape, and just about ran out of tape; it's 9 1/2 feet tall! I guess he sure likes where he's living now, because we don't water him at all! I named him Lefty because he's got a couple gunshot scars; I figured that makes him a cowboy-gunfighter sort of a cactus, so he needed a cowboy-gunfighter sort of name! His companion is the Argentinian Toothpick cactus in the left-hand part of the photo; its name is Pancho (sort of a South American cowboy kind of name)... Pancho doesn't like his new home quite as much (he hasn't grown much at all since we moved him to this house), but hopefully with all the rain we've been getting, he'll start to grow again soon. (by the way, the Argentinian Toothpick's name comes from the fact that the cactus spines can be a few inches long, and could be used as a toothpick, I guess- you wouldn't catch me doing that, that's for sure!)

Tom and Lefty: Christmas 2008

For comparison's sake, here's  a pic of Tom with the Saguaro from Christmas 2008. We had it all decked out with white lights and a Christmas hat; not sure if we'll be able to do that again this year- at the very least, we'll need a bigger hat, and more lights!

then and now--

Then, December 2008... we'd already had the saguaro for about a year here (not sure when exactly we bought it; I could look it up, but the receipt is upstairs). It was 5 ft tall when we bought it, and Tom is 5 ft 8 inches, so it's already grown maybe close to a foot, here? (This saguaro was "rescued" from the desert by the landscaping company, probably from a construction site-- they do that here: saguaro cactus flowers are the state wildflower, and saguaro cactus in the wild are protected, so permits must be obtained before moving or destroying them. Anyway, when we bought it, it was 5 feet tall, but had some "character" due to having been used for target practice- which is also illegal in AZ- at some point in its past.) Below is the Now pic, taken just this morning... Tom hasn't shrunk any, so that means the saguaro has grown quite a lot... we (okay, he) measured it last weekend with the tape measure, and it was 8 1/2 feet tall. !!!!! We had it moved from our first house to this one, and when the landscaping guys saw it, they asked if we watered it: Nope, not since it was planted and got settled in. Apparently, it just likes us!

...now if it would just bloom... which hopefully will be in another couple feet!! (for a few facts: saguaro are native only to the Sonoran Desert, take up to 75 years to develop a side arm, and their growth rate is dependent on the amount of precipitation they get. They can live as long as 200 years, and can get up to 50 feet tall. ...so ours has a ways to go, yet.)