Agamemnon on Redington Road

Agamemnon on Redington Road

Our little Honda Fit, Agamemnon Jetson, is named after its ancient color (bronze -- get it?) and its futuristic shape. In Tucson, it stands out a bit, but so do Smart Cars and motor scooters. Lots of pickup trucks, muscle cars, and SUV's in Tucson, and in the wealthy Foothills, lots of Mercedes and two-seater vanity cars.

Tucson from Redington Road

A car like Agamemnon might pass in Tucson (we won't even mention Peenix) metro area, but in the rest of Arizona, it's an oddity. This is a cowboys and Indians frontier state where the Sonoran Desert and dirt roads breed pickup trucks and other vehicles with big wheels, big engines and high clearances driven by guys wearing big hats.

Looking south, past agave bloom to Rincon Mountains

Redington Road is an extension of Tanque Verde Road, sort of. Tanque Verde may have been a dirt road in its past, but now it's mostly a four to six lane upscale urban retail sprawl heading east. Recently widened to accommodate the growing suburban population, Tanque Verde ultimately resumes a conventional, two-lane status and turns into Redington Road. This is an area of very nice houses surrounded by lots of acres. Continuing east and gaining elevation, we arrive at the boundary of the Coronado National Forest where the asphalt ends. From city to country estate to desert all in the space of a mile or two.

The first six miles of dirt road take you to the pass itself, merely a high point somewhere between the Santa Catalina Mountains and the Rincon Mountains. Another twenty-two miles of dirt road takes you to Redington.

San Pedro valley from Redington Road, Galiuro Mountains in the distance

Local members of Redington Chamber of Commerce

Redington is marked on most road maps as if it were a town with a gas station, mayor, and a chamber of commerce. In fact, it's only a concept in name, a farm-ranch accessible only by dirt roads. Once the home of a post office, one of its founders was lynched in Florence on suspicion of being involved with a stagecoach robbery near the ranch.

I think the map makers did not want to leave an empty space in the middle of the San Pedro valley, so they seized upon the idea of Redington.

Agamemnon and I got past mile 18, about two-thirds of the way to the Redington metropolis, over a reasonably good gravel and dirt road, rarely going over 20 m.p.h. for fear of hitting something with the bottom of the car. The stunning view of the San Pedro valley and the Galiuro Mountains in the distance can only be hinted in a photo. Add the agave blooming this time of year, and you have a very Sonoran experience.

It was Memorial Day weekend, but very few vehicles, and almost all of them pickups.  Most of the holiday weekend activity was in the three informal shooting ranges. These areas are designated by the broken glass, cans, and other garbage that carpet the ground and brush.

As Tucson News reported last November, the EPA is investigating these three sites of Merkin macho. "The area is littered with lead shells and bullet ridden trash that people have used for target practice. . . . According to the complaint filed with the EPA, soil samples collected from various sites at Redington pass show extreme soil lead levels. . .. There were several signs warning people not to dump waste and to pick up their shell casings . . ..  Almost all of the signs we drove past were riddled with bullet holes."

Agamemnon and I kept moving as we heard the rat-tat-tat of pistols and the bursts of a machine gun. I kid you not. This may be the real Merka of Sarah Palin, and Jesse Kelly would call these contaminated garbage dumps "freedom," but I have to admit I don't like guns or garbage.

East of the pass is a ranch. One has to admire the fortitude of living here. Some distance away, by the side of the dirt road, is a sweet sight. Some kind person took the trouble to build a brace for a barrel cactus growing among rocks. For me, that ranch and cactus brace are parts of the real America.

Agamemnon and I got back to town safely; no incident. I'm awfully proud of the little guy trekking over rugged Sonoran hills in the company of 4x4 trucks and off-road vehicles. Not only can this tough little beast handle the dirt roads, it is air-conditioned, has an iPod connector, plays MP3 disks, and gets damned good mileage. It looks cute, too.

Sonoran Green Stick Blossom Festival

Palo verde (green stick) is one of several pea family members that thrive in the Sonoran Desert. (The others include mesquite, acacia and Mexican bird of paradise.)

One variety of the palo verde, the blue (because there's more blue in its green), is the Arizona state tree.

Thanks to legislators with knuckle-head priorities, Arizona also has a state gun, the Colt single action army revolver. Hey, in Arizona, even Democrats own pistols and ride horses.

Native to the Sonoran Desert, the palo verde blossoms in spring. Golden flowers cover its sparse, green branches. When they fall, it's like a gentle shower of spinning gold flakes dancing with the sunbeams.

The flowers attract swarms of bees, their loud hum beginning at sunrise. I don't hassle them. They are busy with their work, gathering and pollenating.

The blossoms make a bright yellow carpet over ground, walkways and shrubs. You see blossoms playfully impaled on saguaro spines.

This spring, the green stick blossom festival has been particularly spectacular. The rain we had last December encouraged a lot of flowers.

Japanese art film directors love to show blooming cherry and plum trees, their blossoms falling like rain. Here in Tucson, it's a gentle, golden rain of palo verde blossoms.

Only the festival is better here because we can eat the fruit. We have one up on the Japanese merely flowering fruit trees. The peas of the palo verde are edible, and thanks to the bees, bugs and birds, plentiful.

They are small and a bit time consuming to shell, but even raw, they are incredibly mild flavored. A quick saute in butter and hmmmmm.

100 and Counting

Ever looked at a pool thermometer? If you are in Lower Alaska, probably not.

Ever wonder why the marks go up to 120°F?  If you are in Baja Arizona, you know.

I think we have learned how to warm the water in the cement pond and, at the same time, keep evaporation to a minimum. The trick is not just covering it with a "solar blanket", it's cutting it to shape.

The pool service guys we hired for the first few years discouraged using a pool cover, as do the guys working the counters at Leslie's Pool. "It won't keep your pool clean," is the typical first response. Well, yes it can. You simply have to skim the debris around the edges when you pull it off, and sweep and wash off the cover every now and again. Granted, it's easier as a two-person job, but hey, Shari and I get along.

For years the problem we had with pool covers was the wind blowing it off. I'd put bricks on the edges, only to find the occasional brick in the pool.

Then we cut the thing to fit; nothing hanging up and over the edge. Between lying below the surface of the concrete apron and the surface tension of the water itself, we've yet to have a wind gust disturb it in the least.

By the middle of April the temperature of the water was in the eighties. Early May it was in the nineties.  Yesterday afternoon when I took the cover off it was 102°F in spots and averaged 100°F when it got stirred up. That's like bathtub temperature. It's particularly soothing at night when the the stars are out and the water is warmer than the air temperature.

Spring Flowers

Hanging cactus

Baby cactus

 As spring evolves in the Sonoran Desert, odd looking cactus plants develop stunningly beautiful flowers, almost overnight.

Big cactus

The hanging cactus has formidable, long spines, yet its flowers are graceful, soft and inviting.

The tiny cactus in that donkey planter has been flowering for over a month. Each flower is about a quarter of an inch across.

Now the giant saguaros are beginning to flower. The green buds on the tips become big white flowers with yellow centers that turn into sweet, lurid red fruit.

Eaten by birds, the fruit seeds are pooped and account for the baby saguaros that I have catalogued and treasure throughout our yard.

Hail (as in Ice Rain)

That front that passed through on the last day of winter brought rain and hail to Tucson, about a half an inch of precipitation. We got the jet stream from Seattle, I swear. And a hearty thank you.

It was our small taste of winter in what has been a very mild season.  No rain is unappreciated in this part of the world.

We had two days of rain, wind and occasional hail. It's only a memory now. We are in spring and temperatures reach the eighties this week, maybe even ninety on Saturday.

Shucks, the cement pond is up to seventy-two and I've been dipping for weeks now.

Bobcats

One of two bobcats whose snarling and howling yesterday
got me out of my office grabbing my camera.

We've had a lot of bobcat sightings the last month or so. Different bobcats have been walking through yards and driveways. One big one was scratching its front paws on our gum tree by the house. Yesterday, a couple of young ones were wandering below our house.  Shari put out a tub of water in case they were thirsty.

"The bobcat is a medium-size cat weighing 12 to 30 pounds with an average adult length of 2 to 2.5 feet. Bobcats are timid and typically avoid human contact, but do not let their relatively small size fool you. They are tremendously strong and can bring down a small deer. They can become ferocious when challenged, so never approach a bobcat."

Last year I was trimming bush below the house when I saw a bobcat passing below me.  It didn't seem to be bothered by me. The cat was looking for food.

Photo courtesy of our neighbors, Randy & Sandy, who
write, "We have been seeing them every couple of months
and believe they were fighting outside our window last week.
Also been seeing the coyotes and javelinas a lot.
Watch out for the rattlesnakes.
They will be out soon and please don't kill them."

I have read that bobcats are more fussy eaters than, say, coyotes. Bobcats like rabbits. Over the course of several long minutes, this bobcat traversed the gully below me, then up the slope where a rabbit was munching on a cactus. I was hoping to witness a kill (sorry, Mr. Rabbit), but the rabbit disappeared and the bobcat continued traversing down the other slope on the west of our house.

Several times these past couple of months, we've been sitting in the front of our house, watching the cactus grow, when we spotted a bobcat. It's a trick to keep the dogs from barking, much less running out and tempting the gourmet sensitivities of a wild and very capable hunter.

Usually, by the time you get your camera, you get a shot of the cat's backside. In 2007, howling and snarling sounds from the back of the house were from two bobcats in the pine tree. Maybe they had slept there. I got video of them climbing down the tree.

The Shed

It's done, if not completed.

It's done because we've loaded it up with storage. At Shari's urging, emptying our rental storage unit was accomplished in a couple of hours courtesy of a U-Haul rental. To our pleasant surprise, there was extra room so we played musical shelves with all sorts of items stored in the garage, cluttering Shari's small studio, and leaning against the wall in the backyard outside our bedroom.

It's never complete because nothing ever is. The door needs to be painted so it disappears in the same color.  The roof is questionable. There's landscaping to further hide/blend matters.  Brick and concrete pavers need to be reset so they slope in a reasonably even fashion away from the house.

Come March 15, the traditional end of risk of freeze, something almost unimaginable as we are experiencing highs in the 70's and lows in the 40's, we can plant some trees to further hide things and take advantage of the water that collects in the little gully in front of the shed.