The above is a Flash® slideshow depicting some of the flowers and other things we see in our little corner of the desert during the spring months. All photos taken on or near our Wickenburg, Arizona homestead. Click on the image to advance (this is 1 of 6 frames).
Slideshow subject matter: Prickly Pear Flower, Ocotillo Flowers and buds, Tiny Mesquite Flower Clusters, Lemon Blossom, Cholla Flower and one Pituophis catenifer . . .
This evening, after having showers and clouds most of the day, turned out to be quite colorful, thanks to the weather in the area. Damsel and I went out into the courtyard this evening to watch as the sun illuminated the clouds with warm colors.
I took this photo from the courtyard which was one of several I might have posted, the colors and textures were so nice. Tomorrow is supposed to be a bit sunnier, but with clouds and potential showers to return on Sunday and Monday. “April showers bring May Flowers,” my Mom (and zillions of others, I’m sure) used to say in mid-spring to us kids when rains would happen in my native California. Click on the image to enlarge.
While we were walking the dogs this afternoon, Damsel called me over by the mesquite tree across the road to show me a swarm of bees that were hanging from a branch. I already had my camera and long lens since I was going to take a photo of a project with the travel trailer. I took the photo of the bees in the top image.
I called one of our neighbors to see if he knew if there was a bee keeping service in town. He just happened to have a friend that kept bees and would be interested in harvesting this swarm.
Shortly after dusk, they showed up with all the equipment, bee suits and whatever and proceeded to knock the swarm, queen bee and all out of the tree and into a bucket with a lid (of course). The whole process took about half an hour, but the bees are gone, to our neighbors’ and our mutual relief. They have kids and we have dogs, neither that mix well with a beehive in the vicinity.
Click on either image to enlarge.
One of the more scenic highways in Arizona is State Route 74 which connects US 60 in Morristown (10 miles south of Wickenburg) and Interstate 17 at New River, near the north end of Phoenix. The highway runs through an area dense in growth of the iconic saguaro cactus. The road goes through some flat desert and then at the east end through gentle hills and across the Agua Fria River just below Waddell Dam at the south end of Lake Pleasant.
It was a beautiful day today with temperatures in the mid to upper 70’s and a little breezy with gusts to around 15-20 mph. High thin clouds and mostly blue skies. The image above is somewhere in the middle of the road but typical of the scenery you can enjoy when out here. Click on the image to enlarge.
I got this screen capture this morning over at Archaeoastronomy.com which has probably the best depiction of the orbital stations of the Earth relating to seasonal changes. The animated graphic nicely illustrates the concept of the Earth passing through the eight stations as it orbits the sun.
Coincidentally with the advent of spring, one of the hedgehog cacti I wrote about yesterday has two flowers open this morning. Damsel took this image of one of them. Click on the image to enlarge.
Thanks to an El Niño shortened winter, spring wildflowers are already popping up everywhere in the desert. Last week, during our visit to the West Valley (Bob had a doctor appointment), we noticed a lot of wildflowers along the roadside and in the median on US 60 between Wickenburg and the outer loop (Loop 303) of the Phoenix Metro Area, which is where the desert ends and the urbs begin.
We took the dogs for a walk today after dinner and I remembered to bring my camera since we see wildflowers along our walk. All three of these photos above were taken within a quarter mile of our house and are completely uncultivated desert wildflowers.
From left to right above, we have an Arizona Poppy, a Desert Marigold and an Orange Mallow. I used my usual Canon Rebel T3 to capture all three images. Click on any of the images to enlarge.
This is one of the projects that Damsel and I have undertaken to modify her rock and cactus garden on the west side of the property. This is to account for the effects of having built a retention wall adjacent to the RV drive that now diverts runoff from the hills to the north. After we built the wall last year, water now flows to the west of the property rather than across the RV drive as it has in the past.
In the image above, the west end of the wall can be seen at the right edge. We have started lining the edge of the little creek that formed last summer when we had a great monsoon rainfall last summer. The idea is to line the banks with rocks to confine the flow to within the creek bed near where the water comes out from behind the wall.
Further down the creek, the banks are less defined. We decided to use some very large boulders (seen at the left of the photo) to keep the flow going down the natural creek wash that was there before, rather than spilling toward the west where there are some decorations and the trash bins are over there too.
As you can see in the photo, we have partially completed the bank lining up near the end of the wall. Next, we will continue to bring more of the rocks and complete the lining from where the rocks end upstream to the boulders that are on the left. After that, we will dig down to where the original landscapers put the creek rocks five years ago.
We hope that we can complete this project a little at a time (rocks are heavy!) over the spring before the next monsoon season. Click on the image to enlarge.
UPDATE: March 04, 2016 – Damsel and I spent an hour or so finishing the west bank of our little runoff creek today. We gathered small boulders and round rocks from other areas on the property and continued to line the far side of the creek with reinforcements for the runoff that we expect this coming monsoon season.
The top panel is the work we completed when we posted the picture above; the bottom panel is the work we completed this afternoon. Click on the image to enlarge.
