We were fortunate to purchase a piece of the Sonoran Desert when we bought our lot in Wickenburg, AZ. I took this photo of one of several cholla growing on the property. I like the way it looks against the blue Arizona sky. Click on the image to enlarge.

The red amaryllis I posted a few days ago now has all four trumpets open. There is actually a fifth flower developing, but I don’t know if it’s going to amount to much. Bob held the amaryllis against the blue Arizona sky for this photo. Just beautiful, if I do say so myself. Click on the image to enlarge.

Last March, we had the landscaping crew plant rosemary bushes on the embankment behind the house along the RV drive. They planted approximately sixty one-gallon bushes in diagonal rows of two or three down the slope of the embankment. They set up the irrigation tubes and started the automatic timer for the watering cycle. The photo at the right shows a section of the embankment with the newly-planted rosemary bushes.

Yesterday, Damsel took this picture of the embankment. The two photos were taken looking toward about the same area of the embankment. The top photo was taken in the morning while the bottom photo in the late afternoon. It has been roughly ten months since the rosemary were planted and the progress is obvious. Eventually, we’re hoping that the rosemary will cover the entire embankment to help stabilize the erosion and to make a pleasant backdrop along the RV drive.

Click either image to enlarge.

Maybe it’s not exactly a castle, but our little house in Casandro Wash seems just like that to us. Besides, Arizona is a Castle Doctrine State. Click on the image to enlarge.

Compost red wiggler worms slow down their consumption of organic scraps in the wintertime, but we humans keep producing the scraps. So, to reinforce the worm workload, we ordered a thousand more red wigglers from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm.

Image - the compost bin after introducing the new worms. Click on the image to enlarge.

The worms arrived in the mail today, so to get things started, I gave them a “drink.” The worms are packed in dry peat and come in a bag (see insert in photo). The next step was to dig down below the organic scraps in the compost bin to the layer of worm castings below. I added some moist garden soil and put the ball of worms on top of the soil. The instructions that come with the worms say to cover them with a wet newspaper. The worms will absorb the moisture and begin to crawl into the soil and thence start consuming scraps within 48 hours.

We bought several strings of Christmas lights when we moved to Arizona early this year. The novelty is that these are made from used shotgun shells. Sort of like recycling in a gun-friendly sort of way. I took a close-up of one of the shells and inset it in the image. Click to enlarge.

These nice orange-colored roses are in the office this week. Click on the image to enlarge.

I know that there are a lot of species with the “Christmas Cactus” nickname. We have several cholla on the property with that nickname but they look (and are) formidable as opposed to the flowers on this delicate succulent. I got this potted plant last week at the supermarket. Click on the image to enlarge.

A little at a time, we’re going to decorate our little desert house for the Christmas Holiday. Today, I started out by trimming our little mailbox with poinsettia flowers. They are the plastic kind, but look very nice around the rim of the milk can that serves as an anchor for the post. Click on the image to enlarge.

Last week, we brought home several stems of Asian lilies that were on sale on the flower stand at the supermarket. This week, they have started to open and display their vivid colors. Click on the image to enlarge