Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Desert Globemallow

Desert Globemallow

Wildflower season is here in the beautiful Sonoran desert. I love the little flowers that just seem to pop up alongside the roads here in town. Here is a little information about this tiny but beautiful flower from Wikipedia:

Sphaeralcea ambigua, commonly known as Desert Globemallow or Apricot Mallow, is a member of the genus Sphaeralcea in the mallow family (Malvaceae).

It is a perennial shrub native to parts of California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona in the U.S. It grows well in alkaline soil, both sandy or clay, usually in the company of creosote bush scrub and desert chaparral habitats, from 490–8,200 feet in elevation. It is found in the Mojave Desert, Great Basin deserts, and Sonoran Desert ecoregions.

Click on the image to enlarge.

26 Mar 2013 by Arizona Flowers Photography

Quadruple Conjunction

The sun, Venus, Mars and Uranus are all gathered in the sky in tight formation. Unfortunately, without the aid of the scientific instrumentation on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), nobody can observe the event because of the sun’s glare. The animation below shows the event with a solar shield in place as seen by SOHO. Refer to the link below the animation to identify the planets. (Hint: Uranus is pretty hard to see in the noise and clutter in the animation.)

Quadruple Conjunction

Excerpt of the description of the event from SpaceWeather.com:

DAYLIGHT ALIGNMENT OF PLANETS: Venus, Mars and Uranus are gathering for a remarkable alignment. But don’t bother looking for the conjunction; it is happening in the daylight sky within a few degrees of the glaring sun. Using an opaque disk to block the glare, coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) are able to track the planets.

Venus and Uranus will cross paths within 1.5 degrees of the sun on March 27-28. Mars and Venus have their own very close encounter on April 6-7. Mars will be so close to the sun throughout the month of April that it will limit NASA’s contact with the Mars rovers and orbiters.

25 Mar 2013 by Astronomy Science

Nesting Season

Nesting Season

There are several Curve Billed Thrasher couples in the area that have shown signs of building nests in the cholla cactus around the area. I expect to find several eggs in the next few weeks in the nests that these interesting birds have built. Click on the image to enlarge.

24 Mar 2013 by Arizona Critters Home & Garden Photography

A Desert Marigold

A Desert Marigold

I stopped and took a photo of this pretty desert marigold on our way to visit Mom today. It was growing on the side of the road about a quarter mile from here.

The Sonoran Desert Museum has this factoid about these wildflowers:

The desert marigold (Baileya multiradiata) is a member of the Asteraceae family. The members of this family are characterized by individual florets arranged in dense heads making the floret group look like one single flower. On the marigold the clusters form a head 2 inches in diameter and are bright yellow in color. The leaves are green with silver-white hairs, lobed, and grow very low on the thick stems.

These plants can be found growing on sandy or gravelly soils of roadsides, plains, washes, mesas, and pinyon-juniper communities.

22 Mar 2013 by Arizona Flowers Photography

The “Earth Hour” Sham

This Saturday evening, a bunch of GREENBATS® will douse their lights to celebrate their ignorance about the true cause of climate variations. They will make their self-righteous symbolic statements that may actually result in increased CO2 emissions from power facilities, all in the name of Earth Hour.

Investors Business Daily carried an editorial on the silliness of this misguided concept:

Earth Hour: Vain Symbolism, Environmentally Unfriendly

Nonsense: For 60 minutes Saturday night, those living in the shallows of our culture will kill their lights during Earth Hour to increase awareness of climate change. Some will feel self-righteous. Nothing will be achieved.

Earth Hour, organized by the World Wildlife Fund, began in Sydney in 2007. It has since spread to 152 countries, where it plumbs the depths of silliness and modern indulgence.

“It may inspire virtuous feelings,” academic Bjorn Lomborg wrote last week, “but its vain symbolism reveals exactly what is wrong with today’s feel-good environmentalism.”

As is often the case with do-good projects, Earth Hour will actually do harm to its goal.

“During Earth Hour (8:30 local time), any significant drop in electricity demand will entail a reduction in CO2 emissions during the hour, but it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterward,” Lomborg wrote in Project Syndicate, a website dedicated, it says, to “thought-provoking commentaries.”

[read more]

21 Mar 2013 by Environment Global Warming Greenbats

Bringing Mom Home

traffic.jpgOver the last two days, I have made a marathon trip to California to fetch our Mom to her new accommodations here in beautiful Wickenburg, AZ. Overall, the traffic was not too terrible, but the usual watch your @$$ factor for the California Crazies on the road did apply. There were a couple of instances where I got cut off by inadvisable lane changes where the other driver’s rear bumper was a mere four feet in front of my front bumper.

Luckily, the trip was without incident and Mom is safely spending the night here in beautiful Casa Casandro. As I write this, she is all settled in on the sofa in the great room with the TV and some of her favorite word puzzles. (Note to self – get more word puzzle books.)

Tomorrow, we will enroll her in the assisted living program at our local retirement ranch. She is sad about leaving her cats and daughter in California, but looks forward to meeting new friends and getting quality 24/7 care. She really likes our house, so we can look forward to having her over for visits and food from time to time.

20 Mar 2013 by California Retirement

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