Hmm... VERY flat tummy! Crooked in the bed too!
There was an exhibition of art from an artist who paints on glass and then adds gold leaf. Very nice!
Pomegranates.
Next stop Tohono Chul which, to all accounts, has a nice restaurant. Tohono Chul means "desert corner" and is borrowed from the language of theTohono O'odham , the indigenous people of southern Arizona .
Tohono Chul is a 49 acre desert preserve that has an exhibit house, museum, bistro as well as various gardens. Of the 3 gardens we saw today Tohono Chul was our favourite. And it has a very good bistro where Jim and I shared a quesadilla with carne asada, black beans, salsa and soured cream. It was delicious and, because we shared, not too much.
We did quite an exploration of the gardens.
The butterfly garden which is recognised as a resting place for butterflies on their way south. Imagine - they fly thousands of miles!
A stone with all sorts of metal donated to Tohono Chul
A cactus fountain.
The theme in the exhibition room is, of course, day of the dead. There was some marvellous art.
Jim loved this - a coyote and a roadrunner on a skateboard. Pity it's out of focus.
I love this. It is crocheted. I must show it to my knitting ladies.
A beautiful shrine for day of the dead with names of docents of the past - keeping them alive!
Jim and Fionnuala might look like this if Jim takes up the guitar when he passes over!
These are a few of the panels of a day of the dead patchwork.
The native people believe that the saguaros are people and that when loved ones die they come back as saguaros
Just a piece of art from one of the rooms - nothing to do with day of the dead but cute.
Out in the garden sculptures of Javelinas - I'm afraid I am unlikely to see one!
At about this stage we met up with a very friendly docent who accompanied us along the South Loop Trail and along the Saguaro Discovery Trail. He was a mine of information telling us all about the saguaro, the barrel cactus, the palo verde, the creosote tree and the girafe lizard. The barrel cactus is very interesting. This is the cactus that you see the likes of John Wayne in western films cutting open in order to get a drink of water in the desert. Seemingly this is a myth because you would be even more dehydrated after drinking from it from all the vomiting and diarrhoea! However, it does have its uses as it can tell a person who is lost the direction to take. All barrel cacti lean towards the southwest where the sun is. Because the side facing the sun gets drier than the other side the cactus leans in that direction.
Saguaro germinate in the shadow of a nurse tree which is usually a palo verde - so called because of its green trunk.
The creosote tree has multiple uses, aside from being used in buildings. When it rains it emits a smell that people in this area find comforting. When they catch the smell in the air they know that it is raining somewhere. The leaves are used for all sorts of medicinal purposes. Docent Jim says that if he has an upset stomach he nibbles about 2 of the little leaves and he, almost immediately feels much better.
The girafe lizard is so called because it carries its tail high in the air and when birds strike the tail breaks off but it grows another. Great stuff!
A lot is not yet known about the saguaro. Researchers at Tohono Chul are trying to establish how fast a saguaro grows and how it responds to changes in the weather. The blue, yellow and green markings are where they have sprayed the spines that colour when they were at the top of the cactus. Because a saguaro grows from the top forcing the spines outward they can tell how much and hoe fast it has grown.
Some type of lizard but not a girafe lizard which moves very fast.
So we're all gardened out at this stage! Not only that but the insects have had a field day dining on me. I am now nursing 12 insect bites of various sizes and colours but all itchy and requiring much self control not to scratch. Efforts not to scratch have resulted in a number of odd contortions that, witnessed by others, could cause them to suspect there is something really odd about me. Jim reckons there is anyway, bits or no bites! (I wonder would creosote leaves help - the bites, not the oddness.)
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