We’re getting some light rain this evening and hearing thunder and seeing lightning flashes. This morning, we were on errands and I caught this panoramic image of the build-ups over the mountains to the north. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized panorama.
When we were deciding on the furniture for our new house, we concluded that we would need an office area, so we chose one of the three bedrooms to use for that purpose. We brought our office chairs from California and bought two new desks and a file cabinet.
My desk and file cabinet seen in the image features an HP laptop and an external Dell 21 inch monitor. I have a docking station for the laptop that allows me to connect all the auxiliary USB devices, the Ethernet connection and the external audio system. The external monitor, however, plugs directly in to the laptop. One of the two new desks – click on the image to enlarge
Damsel’s desk matches the style of mine, but hers does not have all the drawers and such that she doesn’t need. She has a little notebook HP computer that ties into the wireless function of our LAN router.
We’re planning to get a loveseat-sized foldout bed for the office so that it can be used by visiting guests in addition to the guest bedroom. We still have a number of additional accessories to acquire for several of the rooms. It all seems to be coming together.
I believe this is the last of the summer saguaro flowers on our giant cactus. We were very fortunate to have had so many flowers after the cactus crew transplanted our beautiful saguaro in May. Click on the image to enlarge.
I took this shot of the west side of the house from the other side of the wash that runs north to south next to the house. Click on the image to enlarge.
I guess we won’t be harvesting any of the saguaro fruit this season since the birds seem to gorge themselves on the fruit before we can get them to ripen on the cactus. This is a curve billed thresher helping itself to the pears on the saguaro this morning. We call this the “Skut Farcas” bird because of the yellow eyes – YELLOW EYES!! (Reference – “A Christmas Story” – a quotation by Ralphie.) Click on the image to enlarge.
An unwanted (or maybe wanted by Gore, et al) side effect of global climate change hysteria is a new class of over-reacting nutjobs developing psychosis based on the misconception that humankind is actually capable of destroying the planet by burning fossil fuels.
I read this article published on the CO2 Science website about Austrailian scientists diagnosing “Carborexia,” The Debilitating Disease of Climate Alarmism. Excerpt:
Writing in the International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, Searle and Gow (2011) say “there is a growing consensus that increased awareness about climate change is leading to negative emotional reactions in certain individuals (Fritze et al., 2008),” while noting that “expressions of negative psychological states relating to climate change appear in popular commentary, public opinion polls and increasingly in the medical and psychological literature (Searle and Gow, 2009).” And they add that “doctors are reporting that more and more patients, presenting with anxiety and depression, are citing climate change news as something that they are having difficulty coping with” and that “leads to distress and/or interferes with daily living (Fritze et al., 2008).”
The two Australian researchers note that “other climate related pathologies are also emerging,” citing the work of Wolf and Salo (2008), who “described a patient with climate change delusions and visions of apocalyptic events who believed that his personal water consumption could lead to the deaths of millions of people,” while they write of “an increase in climate-related obsessive compulsive checking behaviors such as checking: gas and power meters to monitor their usage; taps for leaking water; and petrol consumption via the car’s odometer reading.” In fact, they report that displays of climate change related obsessive and depressive behaviors has led to the creation of the term “carborexia,” which “refers to individuals who have a fanatical desire to reduce their personal carbon footprint, to the point where it severely affects their lifestyle and normal daily activities.”
Emphasis mine. Read the rest of the article.
Cow’s Tongue prickly pear cactus is also known as “Lawyer’s Tongue,” “Donkey Ear” and opuntia engelmannii var. linguiformis. We collected a specimen that was laying on the ground under a larger plant in the wash running through one of the local parks. We placed it in a pot of native soil from our wash a couple of months ago. I think it likes it here because it quickly grew two new pads and there are more coming on top of them.
We found WufStuff, a very interesting website that describes this cactus and has a lot of good information about prickly pear cacti in general. Excerpt:
A common sight in Arizona gardens is the Cow’s Tongue Prickly Pear. Folks like this cactus because of the unusual shape of the pads, which strongly resemble a cow’s tongue. It takes little water, and has yellow or orange flowers in the spring that form along the margins of the pads, followed by numerous red fruits.
The cultivating of these cactus requires only that it be planted and left to grow on it’s own, no fertilizer, no watering, nada, nothing. Best grown on land useless for growing corn and other Cattle feed stock. After a year or two, the pads are ready to eat and the fruit is ready to harvest if so desired. After each feeding the cactus is left to grow another meal which happens quite quickly in the desert lands of the Southwest.
Click on the image above to enlarge.
