Merry Christmas, 2011!

Sanctus Desertus (Desert Saint)

Merry Christmas and very best wishes to all as we celebrate the rebirth of another round of seasons with yet another new year!

Days are getting longer, but it's still too cold and inclement to do much outside. It's a time to rest, dream, plan and burn fires. Even more valuable, it's a time to simply be and observe, even as we are active and celebrate.

The little critters know this well. Our reptile siblings have been here a lot longer than we hair-covered thought forms. They are resting within Mother Earth in the bliss and fulness of the emptiness between dreams of insects and hawks.

The collard lizard is among the saints of the desert. Shari chose this little critter to express a little whimsey amidst the retail bustle and Christmas hype. Christmas is within, and that's where humble critters reside.

May we all know the peace and empathy that we call Christmas, or winter solstice, Saturnalia, or whatever! The days are getting longer and soon they will be warmer when our friends, the desert saints, will be emerging to enjoy their busy little lives.

Winter Season

I forgot we had winter in Tucson. Our three-digit summer weather extended well into September, then in the space of a weekend, the weather skipped autumn and became winter. As new as we are to the Old Pueblo, we got used to walking barefoot in our underwear. It took some time to remember why I had sweaters, thick socks, and space heaters. I realized I had to wear them.

It's a continental climate, so there is considerable variation between summer and winter. Even in winter, there is considerable variation between day and night. That means even though we get sunshine and, in the afternoon, warm weather, it can be really cold at sunrise.

Unusual morning fog so thick we could not see
any neighboring house

By Lower Alaskan standards, it's a summer. We recently had a friend from Seattle stay a few days and I felt a little bad because we've had rain here. Actually, we've had a pretty wet December. For the desert it's great, and for locals it's an exciting and different treat, but I felt badly that our friend flew all that distance and got rewarded with two and a half days of rain out of five. He, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed Tucson as a welcome change from the cold, dark, damp weather of Lower Alaska. It's all relative.

We have more guests lined up to stay with us this winter, so I feel obligated to make full disclosure: warning, it can get cold and wet in Baja Arizona.

Bring warm clothes and be prepared for the frustration of tepid air and ever present desert dust stirred by heat exchange systems that work better as air conditioners and are far less satisfying as central heating systems. (Flow one way cools; flow the other way heats, sort of.) Fireplaces here don't work a damn. No inserts, so all the heat goes up the chimney and soot somehow ends up in the room. Rain falls off roofs at random and the guys who put in the concrete apron around our pool didn't bother to worry about water coming under the back doors.  People here can learn a lot about dealing with cold and rain from Lower Alaska.

But also be prepared to enjoy the smell of the desert in rain. If you are lucky, you will see water flowing in the nearby Rillito River. Ordinarily, it's a dry wash filled with sand. Be fascinated by winds that tear branches, and clouds that hide surrounding mountains. Be amazed at how clear the mountains can be, dusted with snow after the cold clouds lift with the heat of the day.

Scorpio

Funny how modern life is oblivious to creatures that have inspired humans for millennia. People have associated creatures with knowledge, water, moods, fertility and . . . you name it. They weren't just pests; they were tied in with consciousness, including our own. Scorpions, for example, were borrowed to represent one of the twelve archetypes of the zodiac.

We saw our first scorpion in the garage not long after we first moved in. It was my very first. There are no scorpions in Puget Sound, and I don't remember any in Sydney. We killed it and worried about more. Then we found a dead scorpion in the house upon our return after summer on Whidbey. We put it in a jar as a curiosity. Then there was the time Shari blithely picked up a live scorpion in our bedroom closet, like a piece of yarn. She quickly realized her mistake. The scorpion was sluggish. We killed it. A couple of mornings ago, as I was playing solitaire in the living room, a little scorpion dashed across in front of me. I killed it.

But the biggest fellow we ever saw was in the backyard; almost five inches long. It was still alive, but clearly its best days were past. I got some video of it moving, but soon it fell over on its back and that's how it died.

They say the little ones are more poisonous. It was a little one that bit me on a small toe. I didn't realize it at the time. For about a day I thought I had a small, slightly burning sliver in my toe. Then it went away. A couple of days later I found the little scorpion in the dining room, dead. I had stepped on it in my bare feet.

So this is why we fear scorpions? If my personal experience is representative, they are on the same level as honey bees and wasps.

Migration North to South

Evening sun on the south side.

I'm still a snowbird. It's just that I no longer migrate from Whidbey Island to the Old Pueblo. I go from the north side to the south side of the house.

The swimming pool is on the north side. In the summers, there's shade by the house and mornings and evenings to spend in the pool. Meanwhile, the sun on the south side makes stucco and brick radiate heat like an oven. But come the cooler temperatures of autumn and winter, the sun on the south side is where this warm-blooded lizard likes to sit and enjoy the heat

I put my feet up, watch the saguaros and the mesquite trees grow, listen to classical Persian music on my portable music & internet radio device, drink my favorite beverage, and wonder whether I want to trim more agave leaves now or mañana.

See, I'm wearing clothes and socks. We do have seasons. We don't have so much of the brilliant autumn colors of leaves turning orange and red. We just have the same palette of colors in the sunlight.

Why, a couple of weeks ago we had rain overnight. The temperature dropped and when the sun came out, the clouds lifted to reveal the foothills of the Catalina Mountains dusted with snow.

We are getting little snowbird visitors from the north: brilliant yellow finches among them. I wish I was fast enough to take pictures. One morning about a week ago there were about eight sitting on branches by the side of our San Simeon street.

The Money in Politics

Presidents Booed, Pizzas Are Vegetables, & Occupying Money

An article on Huffington Post, that website full of news entertainment for the liberal-minded, reports that Congress overruled the USDA and declared frozen pizza a vegetable for the purposes of school children's diet.  Corporate food manufacturers make no money off of fresh fruit and vegetables. They make money off of pre-packed, adulterated foods -- and off of politicians eager for campaign donations.

Protesters occupy Wall Street and other public areas in cities throughout the country. They are angry at the rich, but not particularly well organized, like the wealthy can afford to be.

The wealthy buy propaganda, conservative talk shows and Republican talking points that make Johnny Machine-head boo Michelle Obama and Jill Biden at a NASCAR race. This is patriotism?  To boo the wives of the President and Vice-President promoting an initiative to hire veterans? Where do people get these knee-jerk, hypocritical reactions?

Corporate media. Some conservative; some liberal; but all designed to be popular entertainment that serves to influence and bias instead of inform and educate.

Shari points out that Gaddafi ruled Libya for 42 years by keeping the institutions of government weak and ineffective. As one commentator noted, "Libya, under the elder Gadhafi's 42-year rule, had intentionally weak state institutions and a government that barely existed. Gadhafi, who held no title, had ultimate authority and did not want the development of any other power centers that might challenge him."

Our conservative friends in this county argue that we are safer with a weak and small government. Excuse me? Where do people get such palpably stupid ideas? Propaganda.

The problem isn't that the rich are rich. It's that money drives politics. Don't bother occupying Wall Street unless you occupy the government.

The only way for ordinary citizens to control their own government is to take money out of it. Right now, we are ensuring that we have a government of the money, by the money, for the money. As a nation, a society, and a community, we are confronted by plenty of serious policy decisions. Why are we invariably and unduly influenced towards the alternatives that enrich a few?

Tucson Autumn

Tucson has its seasons. Gone are the temperatures of the three digit days. It actually gets cool at night.

But for our swimming pool solar blanket, swimming would have become quick dipping some weeks ago. Yesterday, the last day of October, the cement pond was down to 81 degrees. Still great for me, but Shari has finally surrendered. This photo was taken two days earlier.

With cooler weather, Shari set up a painting area underneath the fan outside our bedroom. The breeze keeps the mozzies at bay and it still gets hot; in the eighties. Yes folks, we have the occasional lost but irritating mosquito. She is working to complete a painting of Baboquivari and the man in the maze.

Flowers still bloom, goldfish still swim, and the citrus tree which suffered from last winter's freeze has one fruit getting bigger, and several fertilized blossoms turning into teeny-tiny round green things.

But maybe the main reason for this entry is a great sunrise photo that Shari took a few mornings ago.

A neighbor and friend joined us for dinner a couple of nights back. She is much our senior in terms of time spent living in Tucson. She admitted that she never tires of seeing the mountains and the colors. Each time it's different.

Even though I've been here only a few years, I can relate.

Red on Buff

My introduction to the Hohokam motivated us to visit the Arizona State Museum on the campus of the UofA. Shari and I had been there once before several years back. Now we wanted to look at the distinctive Hohokam red on buff pottery.

The museum boasts over 20,000 whole vessels, the world's largest collection of Southwest Indian pottery, but only a tiny sample is on public display. We'd forgotten that the public exhibit is small. There is something about being stuck in a museum which makes it tough to relate to an object.

From the one public room, through a mostly glass wall, one can see into the climate-controlled storage room with racks and racks of pots, plates and figures. That looked intriguing. Neatly organized centuries and millennia.

The public display includes a wall with examples of all kinds of pottery from the various cultures that flourished in the Southwest and northern Mexico. There is an impressive display of photographs of that wall at the museum website. You can see the entire wall, each column, each shelf, and each piece.

The other side of the public area has a display entitled "Paths of Life: American Indians of the Southwest," beginning with the Seri, Tarahumara and Yaqui who are in Mexico. Which raises the odd fact that the U.S.-Mexico border cuts across land traversed by many a people and culture over millennia, including today.

Being confronted with such a great diversity of cultures and languages, I thought of a native language map of the Americas that I saw in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City: scores and scores of languages quite unrelated to each other, making Europe and Asia look quite homogenous.

Somewhere in that museum were samples of artifacts from different cultures in Mexico, among them a culture around Casas Grandes in Chihuahua, Mexico, possibly related to the Mogollan cultures, that flourished about the same time as the Hohokam, a connection between Arizona and the Toltec-Aztec polities in the Mexico City area. Curious. Like the Hohokam, the Casas Grandes culture mysteriously disappeared around 1450. So was it before Columbus, or were they killed off after European diseases struck?

We Europeans live in a continent where populations, cultures and technology flourished equal to any in the Old World. Sadly, we have little awareness of the old spirits.

La Niña, Again

Shari sent me a link to a report in Seattle. The weather folks are thinking we will have another La Niña for this winter, which means cold and wet for Puget Sound, like 2010-1 winter.

In Arizona, another season of La Niña means another dry and warm winter. We already are having a warmer-than-average autumn; highs in the nineties. We get occasional cold spells. One last winter got to 17 degrees, and a few weeks back, the night temperatures got down to the low 50's.

So we are keeping a solar blanket over the cement pond, which so far has kept the water around 86 degrees. Shari and I have a great system. In the afternoon, we peel back the cover carefully so a minimum of debris falls in the pool. We frolic in the warm water. Shari gets a lot of time swimming and aqua-dancing. Then we tuck the pool back under the blanket.

During that cold spell a few weeks back, I couldn't resist a quick night dip under the blanket. The air was cool, but the water was warm.

Casa Grande

Casa Grande, the Great House, abandoned by the
Hohokam c. 1450.  (Its modern shelter has been edited out.)

For some time, a few years actually, I'd wanted to see Casa Grande, about ninety miles northeast of Tucson. Drive another forty minutes and you are in Phoenix, which is one reason I hadn't. Plus modern Casa Grande is a bit of a blight on a flat landscape, despite Bristol Palin's purchase of a house there. What I wanted to see was the Casa Grande National Monument. So on a down day a couple of weeks ago, I went there.

I took a roundabout route, driving up to Oracle, then down into the San Pedro valley, then up to Globe, a mining town east of Phoenix, and downstream past oddly named Miami and a hamlet called Top-of-the-World, then across the basin to Casa Grande. The scenery all along this route is stunning, despite several open pit mines.

Looking southeast from Oracle area.

I ended up driving through the eastern periphery of the land where the Hohokam lived, a people and a culture that developed and flourished in the Tucson and Phoenix basins for a millennia, then abandoned it all around 1450 AD. On the Santa Cruz, Gila and Salt Rivers, they built the largest network of irrigation canals in North America. In the late 1800's when American settlers developed farmlands in the Phoenix basin, they pretty much used the ancient canals as a footprint for their own irrigation systems. Most of what we know about the Hohokam has been discovered over the last two decades. Some 160 sites, over 200 ball courts (c. 900-1100 AD), and almost as many platform mounds (c. 1200-1350) have been identified.

Casa Grande with its shelter.

Casa Grande is the largest remaining Hohokam structure. In 1694, Father Kino, the Jesuit missionary who founded most of the Spanish mission settlements in the Southwest, described the ruin in his journal as the "Great House," which name stuck. Juan Bautista de Anza stayed there in 1775 on his expedition that founded San Francisco.

When it was in use, around the Great House stood platform mounds, ball courts, and many groups of courtyard arranged dwellings. Estimates of Hohokam communities run about 5,000. Just the Phoenix area would have had a population of 100,000.

Today, Casa Grande National Monument is a small, barren site with a nice visitors center and the area around the Great House nicely cleared, fenced, and labeled. Entry into the building is forbidden. Centuries of white man graffiti is a visible reason why. From a picnic area on the other side of the parking lot, signs identify nearby, scrub-covered mounds as platforms and a ball court.

The site is surrounded by dry, flat land and the occasional shock of rectangular green cotton fields. Yes folks, thanks to the Corps of Engineers and farmers' prior water rights, we mine water to grow cotton in the desert. Which is a major reason why the water table has been sucked down and most of our rivers don't flow much any more. At least the cotton fields give an indication of the green Hohokam fields that would have been visible a thousand years ago.

Hohokam ballcourt sites, 700-1150 AD

from The Hohokam Millennium (2007)

At the visitors center at the Monument, I bought The Hohokam Millennium, a richly illustrated collection of articles by current experts in various fields. It's a fascinating read.

I began to realize that Phoenix and Tucson are built over scores and hundreds of sites where Hohokam lived for a millennium. Thanks to modern laws requiring archeological surveys before construction, many sites have been examined. But Hohokam lands have been plowed under and built over. All that's left of one of the two largest platform mounds, Mesa Grande, is surrounded by urban development.

Now when I look at the surrounding mountains, or wonder at the saguaro cactus and other plants that thrive in the Sonoran Desert, I think of the long history of peoples who lived here. This place is not only stunningly beautiful, it's also full of life. There are spirits of peoples and cultures here about whom we know only little.

I am planning on doing more exploring, starting with the Hohokam exhibits at the Arizona State Museum on the UofA campus here in town.

Jasmine & Nazar on Vacation

Nazar & Jasmine in their traveling nest

I don't really take vacations. For the last six years I am never away from my virtual law office for more than a couple of days, just long enough to drive between Tucson and Whidbey Island. It's a forced march. I do the driving because I want to. Shari is up for the adventure. Our two furry children, Jasmine and Nazar, come along because they have no choice.

They are long suffering. Eleven to twelve hours at a stretch, they settle into their nest on the back seat next to the cooler which is stocked with snacks and numerous small tins of Starbuck's espresso. We let the dogs out for the occasional gasoline station and rest stop. Thank god for them that Shari and I drink coffee, otherwise rest stops would be ever fewer.

Sunrise rest stop on the Great Basin Highway, Nevada.

Jasmine, our ten-year old, knows the drill all too well. She eagerly jumps into the back seat. Nazar is two and athletic. He still needs a little coaxing. But even he has become resigned and resists less being picked up and placed on the back seat.

After six or eight hours, Jasmine no longer responds to conversation or her name. Her face remains buried on her front paws. Nazar starts talking and singing, as if to pass the time. Sometimes one or the other comes up front and sits on Shari's lap, but mostly they just hunker down in back.

Rest stops (which in Nevada can be the open road), gas stations, diner parking lots, and motel rooms are what Jasmine and Nazar know about the two and one-half day, 1600-1800 mile stretch (depending on the route).

All of which is to set up a scene in the reader's mind. Imagine two days on the road, over eleven hours each. Imagine arriving at our sister's house outside Walla Walla at the end of the second day. Imagine a fenced in backyard with a lush green lawn. Imagine how Jasmine and Nazar went nuts chasing each other and the frisbee, up and down the grassy strip, ecstatic.

Double Bluff, Whidbey Island

Shari and I had mixed feelings about returning to Lower Alaska. For Jasmine & Nazar, it was pure vacation. Two weeks of cool weather. Green lawns everywhere. Running about gardens and the ill-kept and recently bankrupt Holmes Harbor golf course by our house and Shari's mom's house. Chasing frisbees and the familiar smell of rabbits. (Jasmine knows that word really well.) We got more walks and runs in them each day than we typically get in several days in Tucson.

We even took them to the beach at Double Bluff where dogs and their owners can run off leash. I think Jasmine & Nazar prefer grass to sand, and I know that Aussie shepherds do not like being in water. But I had a good walk and Shari stayed on the wet, firm sand.

Visiting Lower Alaska

Ever since a cruise ship took me up the Alaskan coast, I have thought of Puget Sound in a different way. Puget Sound looks and feels a lot like Alaska, or British Columbia, or as Shari tells me, the south of Norway. Trees, bushes, weeds and grass cover the ground.

Puget Sound is Lower Alaska.

Talking with Whidbey Island friends during our recent two-week visit to the North, the subject of weather necessarily came up. I tried joking several times about visiting South Alaska or Norway, but nobody got the joke. When you are inside, you don't get the view from outside.

Our first morning I desperately wanted to go home. It didn't help that we were sleeping on Costco futons on the floor of the empty, mortgaged house that we have been trying to sell for two years. But it was also all the green outside and all the water that fed and cooled it and everything that went along with it.

I know I was rude with friends and family who live in Lower Alaska. We arrived at the beginning of Puget Sound's summer, September 1, and left towards its summer's end a couple of weeks later. Locals were excited. They wore shorts and smiles as they sat outside in coffee shops. I complained. I missed the dry heat, open sky and palette of colors that extended beyond green, blue and grey.

The weather is reversed in Lower Alaska. Mornings are clear, cold and damp. A heavy dew settles on everything. About ten or eleven in the morning, it heats up enough to dry out and go out. The day becomes pleasant, then muggy from all the dampness, until the sun begins to set. By five in the afternoon, it's getting chilly. By the time it gets dark, it's time for several layers of clothes. Tucson is the opposite. Mornings and evenings are the precious times to be outside. It's during the day that you stay inside.

Of course, I failed to pack enough clothes. When daily temperatures exceed a hundred degrees, it's hard to think about socks, hats, layers and wool. I brought a hiking pullover sweater made of petroleum and a cotton cardigan and ended up wearing them every day, sometimes both together.

Something has changed in Shari and me. We both talked about it during our two week vacation in Lower Alaska. Nothing in Puget Sound's best stretch of weather for the year made us regret leaving. We were happy to have made the move to Tucson.

We took a long drive down I-5 through Oregon and California. (One could argue that Lower Alaska extends to the Willamette Valley.) We passed through the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, then over Tehachapi to Barstow and through the Mojave Desert. Crossing the Colorado River into Arizona at Parker, we began to see saguaro, cholla and ocatillo, open sky, pink and brown rocks, and dry dirt. It's so stunningly beautiful. We felt at home in the Sonoran Desert.

Eighty-Eight Degrees

The water in the cement pond is eighty-eight degrees. That's a new high for this year. Of course, we've had temperatures in three digits for as long as I seem to remember, so this shouldn't be news. But still, eighty-eight degrees in the swimming pool means lots of pool time. Shari swims for a half hour or hour. Tom dips more than he swims, but he is mucho alegre.

We are hunkering down for our expedition to South Alaska (Puget Sound), and we are looking forward to the cool weather.  Even more, we are looking forward to family and friends -- like big time. I hope we pack enough warm clothes.

But we'll miss the swimming pool. Island Athletic Club is going to have to serve Shari. It's heated, no?

The Rain Show

Our first summer month here, and it was only a month, I found myself having some cabin fever by the fourth week. The outside heat during the day was discouraging. I began to appreciate why you don't see many Tucsonans working or sitting in their yards. Still, we enjoyed that summer month so much that we decided to move here permanently.

There is something about warm or even hot evenings spent in a swimming pool, and the gentle light and cool exhilaration of mornings.

A couple of evenings ago we had heavy rainfall in our area. The night before, it fell to the west of us and we got nothing. Weather is very local here.

It's amazing to watch the weather come in, typically from the east. Light, fluffy clouds form, then a dark, solid, ominous cloud that covers the horizon, slowly advancing to block the sun. In the distance, to the south, you see similar clouds with the vertically striated shadow that is their rain falling down. The air starts to feel thick and moist.

One evening I gazed at clouds advancing over and in front of the Catalinas that is our view in back, to the north. A flimsy line of clouds led the parade. They looked like the lenticular formations that you see over the high Cascade volcanos, like Rainier and Baker: slender, stretched clouds formed by moist air driven up over the mountain elevation. These fleecy clouds looked like mist rising from the Catalina foothills. As they moved east, they disappeared. Behind them was the dark, solid and heavy mass of cloud, moving slowly towards us.

The leading edge of these storms produce strong gusts of wind, often coming from all directions, tearing branches off trees, blowing debris into my cement pond, and toppling furniture.  There is lightening followed by thunder. Then the occasional heavy drop of water. Finally a heavy, tropical downpour floods the back of the house and the driveway in front.

So I have been feeling cooped up during the days, hiding inside the cool cave of a house, windows shuttered and curtained. Then this storm comes a couple of evenings ago. I go outside and just stare. It's way better than television. I sit in the wicker chairs in front, rain spraying on my legs, gazing at the spectacle and listening to the sounds. Clouds, wind, rain, lightning and thunder. Creeks flowing, branches flying, torrents flowing out the wall scuppers and over the front of the roof. The intoxicating smell of rain.

I realize that the hot days are well worth enduring to experience such fierce beauty.

Spidey

We've actually had some rain this week, about a half an inch. Funny how obsessed we are with rain in the desert, the flip side of being obsessed with rain in Puget Sound.  Here it's new. There it's old.

Little critters come out with the rain. This little tarantula was hanging around the pillows of the bed/sofa in our backyard. I've also seen them working in the yard.  I was working; they were moving out of the way.

They move quite deliberately. I tried to shoo this one away by slapping pillows near it and blowing on it, but it simply climbed on the wall and hung around the window. Not even camera flashes bothered it.

Early morning light & Mexican bird of paradise flowers

They live longer than most dogs. Male tarantulas live ten to twelve years; females double that. Anything that lives so many years has to have some smarts. They eat bugs and small lizards, so they are welcome.

But spidey is not so welcome in the heap of pillows on our outside sofa. After my refreshing swim in the cement pond (86 deg.), spidey was still sitting by the window  —  quite calmly to all appearances. Time for the broom, I thought, but gently. Spidey hardly moved, then climbed aboard. Daddy took him over the wall and dropped Spidey outside. Happy ending!

4th of July Show

It was an unbelievably intense show last night, the Fourth of July, and it had little to do with any fireworks. Mother Nature in the form of a severe monsoon storm gave us a stupendous, late afternoon drama.

The obvious clue was the dark clouds advancing from the east. Even so, we were not prepared for the powerful gusts of wind that swirled in every direction. Eucalyptus branches were flung onto saguaros where they clung to the spikes. Our classically beautiful blue agave flower spike, the proud subject of an earlier blog, is now lying down on the driveway, blown over by successive gusts. The enclosure I built for the vegetable garden, the proud subject of another earlier blog, got blown over on its side. We lost a clay pot, blown over. Bits and pieces of Aleppo pine everywhere, mostly in the pool.

The rain was unusually heavy. Then we realized that the bouncing rain drops were really pieces of hail -- Ice falling from the sky. In the thick of the storm, we thought we'd look out the back door. It was like opening a hatch in a submerged submarine: nothing but water coming in sideways. We leaned into the door and shut it.

The driveway was completely flooded. The little swale to the west, hardly a couple of hundred feet long, had a torrent of water.

Staring at the Storm.

For some reason unknown to us from Puget Sound, houses in Tucson are not designed with rain in mind. Our backyard, all covered in concrete and paving bricks, slopes towards the house. The four doors that open into the backyard are exactly at ground level. With any decent amount of rain, two of the doors, by our TV room and the kitchen, flood immediately. Some years back I cut some 1x2 wood and glued them down with adhesive caulk to form dams outside these two doors. When it rains hard, I am out there with my shop broom sweeping water away from the house. Actually, it's kinda fun, if a little humid.

I like to joke that if you don't like the weather here, wait a couple of hours. The storm blew over and it became eerily quiet, with beautiful reddish light as the sun descended lower and lower.

Guests began arriving for our Fourth of July outdoor extravaganza. It was no small act of courage to get here, driving around flooded streets. But we have good friends, and we all enjoyed sitting outside enjoying the cooled, damp air. The desert smells wonderful in the rain.

Fireworks on A-Mountain pale in
comparison to the divine lightning,
thunder, wind, hail, flying debris
and awakened critter show. 

People had been worried about fireworks starting fires in the tinder dry desert. That turned out to be not a problem. But fireworks were a little scaled down. We got some more rain - the drizzle-drop kind that Puget Sounders are all too familiar with - during the show. But it was the sound of a baby animal crying that interested us. What was that noise?

Armed with flashlights, we looked around the goldfish pond and discovered two frogs. Where do these guys come from? It's amazing here in the desert. One good rainfall and critters you haven't seen in a year come out of nowhere. One frog was making all that noise.

The odd crying-croaking noise continued off and on throughout the night. By morning there were frog eggs deposited in various places around the swimming pool. I could find none in the pond. Did the goldfish eat them? Their bellies were pretty big this morning. Or do frogs prefer chlorinated water for their "act"?

Shari got up first this morning. She used the net to pull four frogs out of the swimming pool and deposit them on the other side of the wall. An hour later, I found another five in the pool. They are well camouflaged. Some looked dead, belly up on the swimming pool bottom. But a few minutes after shaking them from the net outside the wall, they start reviving.

So much clean-up left. It's hopeless to think about raising the blue agave stalk. Garbage cans are already stuffed with yard waste, made even heavier with rainwater. It will take many hours for the kreepy krawler to suck the fine debris off the pool bottom.

A rain gauge a little up the hill registered an inch and a quarter. (Check out http://rainlog.org/usprn/html/main/maps.jsp) Down by the Rillito River, gauges registered a half and inch to an inch. All weather here is very local. Go a few hundred yards and the rainfall will differ greatly. I reckon we got about an inch, judging from the increased level in the swimming pool and subtracting some for the debris and frogs floating and sunk in it.

The forecast is for monsoon rains each afternoon this week. I have to charge my camera batteries.

Rain on the 82nd Day

It rained early this morning in Tucson, heavily enough that it woke me up at three-thirty. What a nice sound, lots of heavy drops on the roof! There were frequent flashes of lightning, occasionally close enough to hear the thunder. I ran outside to put mats, pillows, and a mattress under cover.

The vegetation must be happy. Chlorinated tap water from Colorado does not make things grow nearly as well as sweet rainwater. Soon we will be finding frogs in the cement pond.

April 10 was our last rainfall, so Tucson airport went 81 days without rain, tying for the fourth longest dry spell.

Waiting for the Monsoon

Seventy-seven days without rain. The record is a hundred (2002), but today we are already #8 on the all-time list. However, there have been a few whispy clouds the last couple of days, and the humidity has increased noticeably.

Today the clouds are large and we have partial overcast. The monsoon pattern is brewing, the desert heat pulling in moist air from the Gulf of Mexico over the Sierra Madres.

Local weather experts predict a one-third chance of a heavy rain monsoon season, one-third chance of a dryer than usual monsoon season, and about a one-third chance of an average rainy season.

Inshallah, we will have rains on the Fourth of July.

Desert Bounty, Desert People

There is something in the desert that brings out a sense of spirit more than other, temperate areas. Perhaps it's the awe of a land so exposed to the sun, or the many specialized ways in which life has adapted to the dry, sun-drenched heat.

We helped celebrate the desert last night at our neighbor's annual desert bounty pot luck dinner featuring foods harvested from the desert. Saguaro fruit sauces, sauteed palo verde peas, tepary bean humus, mesquite flour flavored flan, cholla buds, and margaritas. Oh, and grilled chicken and filet mignon.

With us was a traditional spiritualist from the Tohono O'odham, the Desert People. The sun having set, our small gathering sat outside by the pool in the warm air. Joseph is what I would call a shaman, an elder with deep Catholic roots. He sang a traditional song for us from the Akimel O'odham (River People) who live by the Gila River. That song and his voice, accompanied by the oscillating sound of a gourd rattle shaken in circles, resonated with the vibrations of every land and every people. Thai Buddhist chanting was there, as were ancestral voices, Tibetan shamans, dream-time spirits, and plain song prayer.

We each spoke something about what the desert means to us, then he sang another traditional chant, this time from the people the Spanish named after the butterfly, Spanish "mariposa", which became Maricopa. The sounds and vibrations coaxed from the rattle were even more varied and provoking. All juxtaposed over a warm evening, bare feet dangling in the swimming pool. It's like stepping away from time and place.

Desert Flowers

If you would like to see some photos of flowers blooming here in the Tucson area, click on the "Desert Flowers" link that's on the very top right of the main blog page, under "pages".

No words, just images.

Want to See a Rattlesnake?

I suspected that a rattlesnake was living somewhere on the other side of the driveway. A couple of years back we noticed a skin sluffed off by the rocks that line the bottom of the swale. Then a few weeks ago I was clearing dead parts of the oleander bushes by the driveway, the effects of this winter's 17 degree freeze. I saw another skin just outside a hole burrowed by some oleander roots. It was that same burrow where this morning's Mr. Rattler retreated.

This morning I was watering the oleander when I saw Mr. Rattler moving through the dead leaves and puddles of water.  I must admit, the snake looked pretty cool. I had to remind myself that the thing could be dangerous, so I ran inside and called Shari, "Hey! You want to see a rattlesnake?" We took photos and video.

Shari wanted to call Rural Metro to have them come out and remove the snake. We pay a fee so we have that service available. I figure it's been there all this time, so why bother? But we'll probably call Rural Metro.

About an hour later, I'm in another area, also on the same east side of the house, clearing undergrowth, pruning dead and odd growth, and pulling off mistletoe that's choking trees. Again I am watering, this time the stressed acacias and palo verdes that screen us from our neighbor's driveway. I see a king snake hustling towards what I had suspected was another legless reptilian hangout.

Hey, at least we have that gate protected. Come on, Mr. King. Go chase Mr. Rattler away.

The Trouble with Outside

Lizard disturbed from the shoe rack.

Outside is not such an issue in Puget Sound. Most of the year you avoid it. And when you do venture outside, what you encounter in the way of fauna and flora is pretty benign.

Here in the Sonora Desert, there are lots of critters that can be or appear a little unpleasant. Lizards, snakes, coyotes and javalina are benign to humans, unless you provoke them. One needs to pay attention.

I almost stepped on a rattlesnake on one hike in the hills around here. Fortunately, hiking time here is early in the morning when it's still cool. And rattlesnakes are still lethargic. The one I almost stepped on never bothered to stir. But boy, were my eyes ever keenly looking ahead after that.

The rattler I almost stepped on.

So the trouble here with outside the house is that little animals live outside, and most like the shade and protection of anything you put outside. You have to bear in mind what might crawl under or behind. Take the little shoe rack I made for the front door. Sure enough, Mr. Lizard, some eight inches of him (her?) thinks that's a wonderful place to hang out and wait for bugs, reptilian lunch. Reach in for my flip-flops and out scampers Mr. Lizard. Would a slimy, slow moving slug be worse?

Medium sized king snake in our backyard, about four or
five feet long. "Nice snakey, snakey."
We had a much larger king snake living by our goldfish pond.

Some guests, while a little frightening, are actually honored guests around our home. Chief among them is any king snake. They don't bother people. They like to eat rattlers even longer than themselves. So where there is a king snake, a rattler will not want to be. Now that's okay.

Big Is Good, Except the People

I don't get it. We think bigger is better except when it comes to what we do as a community.

We like big stores like China-Mart (a/k/a Wal-Mart) and Costco. We like big servings of food and giant gulps of drink. We like big armies and we collect many things. We like fat bank accounts, big breasts and big, you know, appendages. Huge ball players are great on our teams. Big insurance companies are better because they are safer. Wider and more roads, bigger and more cars, like Hummers, are great. Large hospitals have more resources to heal us. We admire big parks, big movies, big stars, big screens and big houses. We love the fat egos who are the closely followed subjects of tabloids, Huffington Post, and the evening news. We even like big businesses because we like the products they make.

But big government is bad. Like, big business isn't?

Government is how a society organizes and manages itself so it can provide what individuals acting alone or in small groups cannot. Like roads, currency, armies, free trade and corporations. Some societies provide its members with electricity, health care and a certain level of security in old age. But in the country without a name, the country that glorifies big as better in virtually everything, taxes are the work of the devil.

It is a matter of religious faith that businessmen work better than public servants. So instead of government by the people for the people, we want government by business. Like Ayn Rand exhorts, we place our trust in the selfish. We the people fear anything our government does. Somewhere along the way, we decided that our government is not really ours. It's the enemy. We want to privatize everything and make ourselves as little as possible. We become small in the face of those who are powerful without government.

The Cement Pond

We lost another four last night. Where do they go? I counted eighty-two last night. This morning there are only seventy-eight. Do the desert rodents take them in the dark? Or the bats? Perhaps the bunny rabbits get up before dawn to forage. The small ones can easily slip through the openings by the five yard gates.

But no matter, sunshine and heat bring another four or five, and the water in the cement pond is again over eighty degrees. The magic of Mother Nature who provides all for all.

Blue Agave Bloom

A blooming blue agave makes up the logo for Pima County Parks. It's emblematic of the local Sonoran desert. The elegant, architectural shapes of their huge, dried stalks are scattered throughout the hillsides around Tucson. These agaves bloom only once, then they die. Hence their other name, the century plant. We have lots of blue agaves in our yard.

One morning, I looked out my office window and noticed a growth from one of the large agaves. It was the beginning of a flower stalk. That was Tuesday, and judging by the rapid growth over the next few days, it was only a day or two old. By Friday, it was already higher than I could reach. Within three weeks, it was taller than the decades old saguaro cactus next to it. It began branching at the top after about a month, and by six weeks the flower stalks were developed. Buds began to appear everywhere, then after ten weeks, the first blooms.

L to R: Day 1, Day 2, Day 4, Day 6, Day 15, Day 25

Last year's century plant stalk,
leaning over the driveway.
Left: its top section planted.

It's difficult to appreciate the amount of energy and mass that go into this sudden, huge growth. Last year we had another giant stalk that leaned dangerously over the driveway. After it finished blooming and the flowers died, I decided to cut it down before it fell over. That was an education. It must have weighed a couple of hundred pounds. I had leaned an extension ladder against it to try to hold some of the weight. Nothing doing. It came crashing down, smashing a large palo verde branch on its way.

I couldn't lift it, so I cut it in half. Most of the bottom half, about eight feet, serves as stop in the side driveway. What wasn't broken at the top got planted in back, outside and towering over eight-foot high walls. Thing is, after about a year of drying out, you can lift it with two fingers.


Where does all that water come from? Especially this year when it has rained only twice. It can only be that water and energy, stored in the plant, are diverted to the flower stalk leaving once thick leaves thin and shriveled.

We have several old blue agave stalks decorating our backyard. Our most famous stalk was obtained surreptitiously one moonless evening from Finger Rock wash near our house. I had spied it many months earlier, and when my sister Irene visited in April, she helped talk the three of us into the adventure. I parked a discrete distance away and turned off the headlights. Irene wore a flashlight on her forehead and we located the stalk. A few all-too noisy strokes with the handsaw (lights didn't go on at the nearby house) and the dead but still heavy plant was severed. Like primitive hunters carrying a deer on a pole, we marched that stalk to the car and let it rest on the roof. Exhilarated by our bravery and success, we drove home slowly. Next morning the stalk was trimmed and planted in a large Oaxacan pot.

I'd like to leave this year's stalk where it is as long as we can. I have a little solar powered spotlight shining up the stalk, and we sit in front of the house in the warm evenings, looking for bats that feed on the flowers' nectar.