Home & Garden

Southwestern Sconces for the New House

sconces.jpgWe looked for some southwestern outdoor lighting on our last trip to Arizona. Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything close to what I thought was a good design. We bought some inexpensive outdoor fixtures to fill in the holes pending finding the style we like. However, when the electrician opened up the boxes, two out of the three fixtures we bought were broken. We boxed them up and returned them to the home improvement warehouse.

So now what to do? We put the fixture installation on hold while we came back to California for some business here. Bob went on line and found an outfit called TheSouthWestStore.com that custom makes sconces in the style we like.

The photo shows two styles – a bear and a road runner – I chose the bear, but the finish will look like the one shown on the road runner – it’s a blue-green patina with copper highlights. The translucent liner shown will be replaced with an amber mica liner that should look really nice at night time (the link to the night time picture shows light coming out of the top of the sconce – in reality, there will be a metal piece blocking upward light for dark sky purposes). Click on the image to enlarge.

Pumpkins

These three tiny pumpkins are growing on our vine in the California garden. They aren’t going to grow to be the huge pumpkins that you see around this time of the year, but rather into some of the small ones often used for table decorations and such. Click on the image to enlarge.

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Fall Cactus Flower

We drove from Arizona to our California house today. I went out on the patio to find that the plumerias, the Kaffir lily, the Devil’s Tongue barrel cactus and an opuntia vulgaris cactus in bloom. The spikes on the cactus might be threatening, but there’s nothing ‘vulgaris’ about the flower. Click on the image to enlarge.

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Pansy

We visited an outdoor garden shop to start getting ideas about what grows well here and to generally plan for our landscaping. This pansy was on display on one of the tables. I’m glad that many non-desert native flowers seem to do well here. Click on the image to enlarge.

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Goodbye Pride of Barbados

red-sunset.jpgWe said goodbye to my favorite flowers, the Pride of Barbados a.k.a. Red Bird of Paradise last night. We stopped at the Arizona border last night to rest before driving home today after a very productive visit to our new home.

This picture was snapped just as the sun set in the west at Ehrenberg, AZ. By the time we return to Arizona, these flowers will be gone until next spring when they will again be as beautiful. The next pictures I post of these beautiful flowers, I hope, will be taken in my new rock garden at our new Arizona house. Click on the image to enlarge.