Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Arizona

Gold Rush Days 2023

Our little town has an annual event called “Gold Rush Days” in honor of the town’s reason for being: the discovery of gold in 1863 by Henry Wickenburg. Vulture Mine became the most productive mine in Arizona history. This weekend marks the 75th celebration of Gold Rush Days.
The festivities included a Rodeo, a carnival, a giant flea market, a classic car show and a parade.

The carnival featured food concessions, fun houses and a number of rides from gentle kiddie merry-go-rounds to full-on vomit comet rides. The midway completely encircled our town’s community center. We walked through the midway but did not participate in either food or rides. We took a lot of photos, though.

The flea market had most of the usual stuff like home-made arts and crafts, souvenir vendors, apparel vendors and a myriad of other interesting things to see. That’s Damsel in her big shade hat perusing wooden pots and bowls.

We toured the classic car area on Friday afternoon. The usual cars were on display. There were a lot of old classics, some Hot Rods and a couple of rare cars.

The parade started at ten AM AZ time on Saturday Morning (02/11/2023). Damsel and I saw the whole parade of equestrians, local organizations, classic cars on parade, a politician or two and law enforcement/fire department vehicles. The parade went for over an hour.

Damsel and I enjoyed our visits to the exhibits, vending, classics and who doesn’t love a parade. Between the two of us, we took a thousand plus photos this weekend. There are only a few of them shown here. Click on any image to enlarge.

11 Feb 2023 by Arizona Entertainment Nostalgia Photography

Musk Hog Day — February 02, 2023

Musk Hog (Javelina) in our back yard. Clickable

Well, we didn’t seem to have any groundhogs handy, so a Javelina (a.k.a. “collared peccary” and “Musk Hog”) will have to do. Anyhow, the critter saw it’s shadow today and I guess that means that we in Arizona will have six more weeks of Winter. You know, the kind of winter weather that makes places like we live in very popular for people who don’t have mild weather at this time of year, hence the infusion of “snowbirds” into our community.

So that means it will be at least six more weeks of extra bodies in the stores and extra vehicles on the roads before the part-time residents begin to head back to their tundra. Maybe more than six weeks since our experience shows a couple of snowbird exodus dates being IRS Day (4/15) and Memorial Day. By Flag Day (6/14) they should be mostly gone.

I shouldn’t focus on only the snowbirds, since there are a lot of other temporary visitors this time of year. We have the influx of Team Ropers (rodeo), the Senior Pro Rodeo, Gold Rush Days and the carnival and parade that go along with those events. It’s good for the community and the businesses here.

So, getting back to the topic of the environment and the weather conditions here, we expect to have gradually warming days leading up to spring equinox and more significant warming thereafter. As we age, our bones and joints seem to appreciate the warmer conditions, so we are looking forward to the highs in the low 100s and lows in the mid 80s that should be here in a couple of months. That and the nearly empty roads, parking lots and shopping aisles will be welcome as well.

02 Feb 2023 by Arizona Critters Environment

Lemon Harvesting Still Underway

Third Harvest Yield — About 150 Lemons — click to enlarge

Here it is almost late January and we’re still getting lemons off of our Lisbon Tree. Damsel and I picked those shown above a couple of days ago and scores more remain to be picked. We will probably get to the remaining fruit early next week.

We have had this tree since about the middle of 2010, and each year, the tree seems to have more yield than the years prior. The first crop consisted of about 40 lemons while this year we’re at an unknown number since we asked our landscape crew to help themselves — they took what I’m sure amounts to two hundred or more. This year, the tree had a truly overwhelming crop. In addition the landscape crew’s haul, we have picked lemons since mid December three times now.

We will finish the job sometime next week and will be pruning back the tree at the same time. The lemons will be distributed as usual to friends, neighbors, charities and our own Limoncello production. According the sales flyers, lemon prices are “on sale” at $0.50 each. Our lemons are slightly larger than those we see in the produce section of the Supermarket. Believe it or not, we do not put any fertilizer or anything in the “orchard” other than daily watering via timed irrigation.

20 Jan 2023 by Arizona Food & Dining Home & Garden Notions

Oh Look! A Squirrel!

Today, we were replenishing the bird feeders out back and as has been the case lately, one of the little Antelope Ground Squirrels came out to beg for a handout. It’s hard to see in the video above until he starts moving, but he came within a few feet when I tossed an almond over towards him.

After securing his goodie, he scurried to a safe distance and then off to his underbrush or burrow. The squirrels scored a total of five or six almonds (which I carry up there for them) before I was done with the bird feeders.

Happy Friday-the-Thirteenth

From History.com:

Long considered a harbinger of bad luck, Friday the 13th has inspired a late 19th-century secret society, an early 20th-century novel, a horror film franchise and not one but two unwieldy terms—paraskavedekatriaphobia and friggatriskaidekaphobia—that describe fear of this supposedly unlucky day.

Just like walking under a ladder, crossing paths with a black cat or breaking a mirror, many people hold fast to the belief that Friday the 13th brings bad luck. Though it’s uncertain exactly when this particular tradition began, negative superstitions have swirled around the number 13 for centuries.

While Western cultures have historically associated the number 12 with completeness (there are 12 days of Christmas, 12 months and zodiac signs, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 gods of Olympus and 12 tribes of Israel, just to name a few examples), its successor 13 has a long history as a sign of bad luck.

[more]

My Maternal Step-Grandmother was very superstitious, a trait which, thank the Lord, never rubbed off on any of us, myself or siblings. As far as we are concerned, this is just another blessed Friday in January. We hope your day is going as well as ours.

13 Jan 2023 by Arizona Critters Retirement

Lemon Harvest Coming Soon

The Lemon Tree with HUNDREDS of Lemons needing to be picked

Our Lemon tree (which is a “Lisbon” lemon variety) is nearing that time of year when we need to start harvesting the fruit. This year, the lemon crop appears to be much larger than in previous years (we have had this tree since 2012) and we may have to invest several days harvesting an estimated one thousand lemons. Last year, we filled the wheelbarrow twice with an estimated total of 600 lemons. There are many more than that on the tree now.

As we begin the lemon picking, we will be doing the usual thing with them, that is, giving them away to neighbors, the food bank, the senior center and anyone else that we can convince to take a bag home. Of course, we will reserve some for our annual Limoncello production.

We still have a little time before any frosty weather happens; the forecast for Thanksgiving week should be highs in the low 70’s and lows well above freezing. That’s still cool enough to layer up on the clothing, but will be OK for this variety of frost-tolerant lemons for the time being.

Our plan for Thanksgiving dinner is going to be similar to the past couple of years when we had a Keto-friendly menu featuring some of Damsel’s homemade goodies. We’re looking forward to the dinner, but more on that in a later post.

20 Nov 2022 by Arizona Food & Dining Home & Garden Notions

2022 Bluegrass Music Festival

Yesterday, 11/11/2022, Damsel and I attended the first part of the opening session of the 43rd Annual Wickenburg Bluegrass Festival Weekend Classic. The Everett Bowman Rodeo Grounds are hosting the Festival as usual this year. The Rodeo Grounds are also hosting food vendors and various other vendors like jewelry, folk art, crafts and some other merchandise. The T-shirt vendor sold us a hooded sweatshirt with this year’s festival logo freshly silkscreened on it (pictured above – clickable). We try and buy a T-shirt or a sweatshirt each year we attend the festival.

A group called The Arizona Wildflowers came on stage first to perform a set of tunes. These three sisters and (recently added) 8 year old brother performed some great tunes including some gospel and other favorite tunes. We thought they were great! In the (clickable) image above, you can see little brother almost dwarfed by the bass fiddle he was playing. Everyone in attendance seemed to enjoy their performance as much as we did.

We made the tour of the vendors to see what was available; as I mentioned before, we bought a Sweatshirt for me. We also bought a beautiful pair of Moonstone Earrings for Damsel. At this point, we were ready to head back home. We can’t leave the dogs alone for very long, so we said adios to the Bluegrass Festival until next year.

12 Nov 2022 by Arizona Music Notions

One More Run for Staples

In our recent post where we discussed taking a run for staples down to the valley, we commented that we were going to have to make one more run down that way before the holidays (and the traffic congestion that goes with them). Well, today was the final run for the season until after the first of the year unless something urgent comes up.

In the clickable image above (courtesy Damsel), you can see the main drag of our sleepy little town with relatively light traffic even though the snowbirds, rodeo ropers and other seasonal visitors are already here. We were blessed with light traffic all the way until we got into the west valley proper today. Then, we were in the thick of the traffic although it was not as bad as we have seen in past excursions.

Damsel and I arrived at the “Big W,” parked and went into the store with a list of things to get and proceeded to perform what I call “surgical shopping,” which is to navigate to where items on the list are available, put them into the cart and when finished, get to the check-out stand. We did pretty well although we both were distracted from the strict “mission” when seeing something “shiny” or otherwise attractive. Once we had all that was on the list (and a few other items) we headed for the check-out and after a short wait, were headed back out to the truck.

The traffic heading home was not too bad and, as usually is the case, became progressively lighter the closer to home we were. We are glad that this trip, although during a busy season in the valley, was not as big a pain in the backside as it might have been.

25 Oct 2022 by Arizona Notions Photography

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