Some quotes to make your day

 I'm still collecting quotes

that make me laugh or smile.

Here are a few for your Sunday.

I'll take my coffee cold

with chocolate and whipped cream!

And finally, I love this advice:

 Have a colorful day

Cactusland

Resting with saguaros in Catalina State Park near my house.

Even though it's been searingly hot since I moved to Tucson, I'm loving the cactuses that I see everywhere, especially the majestic saguaro (pronounced sa war o). Besides heavily populating the desert, they line highway median strips and punctuate yards and businesses.

The saguaro is native to the Sonoran Desert and only grows in Arizona, northern Mexico and a small part of California. 

At the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

Fun Saguaro Facts

* They are the largest cactus in the United States.

* The tallest one on record was 78 feet high near Cave Creek, AZ, before it was toppled by a windstorm.

* They may take 20 to 50 years to reach a height of about three feet.

* A fully hydrated saguaro can weigh between 3,200 and 4,800 pounds.

* Saguaros routinely live 150 to 200 years.

* They might not grow their first arm until they're about 75 years old. Some never grow arms, while others can have as many as 49 arms.

* The white blossoms are the state flower of Arizona.

* Their red fruits are several inches long and ripen in June. Each fruit has about 2,000 seeds.

* Saguaros provide food and shelter to hundreds of other species, including the white-winged dove, woodpeckers, flickers, owls, purple martins, house finches, ants, and humans.

* Harming or vandalizing a saguaro is illegal in Arizona. Special permits are needed to move saguaros during construction, with a few exceptions.

* In 1982, David Grundman was killed by a saguaro after he shot and poked it trying to make it fall. A 500-pound arm fell on him and crushed him and his car. Then the trunk fell on him. The Austin Lounge Lizards wrote the song "Saguaro" about his death:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7y_9OCCqHM

I took these two photos in Catalina State Park a few months ago. It's been too hot to go back since then.

Doves are often seen perched atop saguaros.

Okay, that's enough for the lesson. Now I'll just show some of my favorite cactus and succulent photos from my new home.

This beautiful prickly pear grows at the front corner of my house and reaches up to the roof. The hummingbirds love its fruit and blossoms.

I also have this rotund barrel cactus and huge agave ...

... and an ocotillo and the pencil cactus (both are actually succulents) that hummers also love.

Here are a few photos of cactuses from walks near my house:

And here are pictures I took over the weekend at the Tucson Botanical Gardens:

Tile bench at the botanical gardens.

I bought this puzzle at the botanical gardens gift shop, and I might frame it after I'm done and hang it up. It's too beautiful to live in a box!

Have a colorful day

Masks by Sonja in Hawaii

Here's my third post about masks, this time with photos from my blogger friend Sonja in Hawaii. She paints fabric in beautiful soft colors that remind me of ocean breezes, sunshine, tropical flowers and all other things Hawaiian. 

Here she is with some of her gorgeous quilts and masks. I just love her colors!

She even put masks on the Foo dogs that guard her home. According to Sonja, "The lions, or Foo dogs, are usually depicted in pairs. When used as statuary, the pair would consist of a male leaning his paw upon an embroidered ball (in Imperialist contexts, representing supremacy over the world) and a female restraining a playful cub that is on its back (representing nurturing).

She also sent a photo of the sun leaving a trail through the clouds, above. Here's the link to her blog:
 /https://sonjahagemanndesigns.blogspot.com/

And across the Pacific and into the desert, the sun rises in Tucson over the Santa Catalinas.

Have a colorful day

Pieces of the Quilt of Life

When I started this blog 10 years ago, I chose "Life Is a Colorful Quilt, and I'm Stitching the Pieces Together" as the subtitle. So today I'm going to present random pieces of life in my ongoing mystery quilt.

My son, Keith, and the first big watermelon from his garden in Wisconsin. His wife said it was the best watermelon she has ever tasted.

Me, doing a yoga pose that I've been practicing during my Covid isolation ... NOT!

Another piece of Talavera pottery from Mexico that I treated myself too. It has four compartments for kitchen utensils and a carrying handle.

A blooming barrel cactus outside the Oro Valley Library.

Yarn "blooming" from a basket in my entryway in the late afternoon sun.

I showed you my house dresses in an earlier post, but this is my "going out" dress -- loose, cool, comfy and colorful. I bought it from Judy in Flagstaff, who dyed it in cool blues and greens. You can buy one too at her shop: JudySallOriginals https://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/home/JudySallOriginals. It's the Easy Breezy Rayon Dress and it runs large. 

It's not this one, but I do have a bobcat hanging out in my back yard, according to my neighbor. I haven't seen it yet. These photos were posted by someone else in Tucson who had a bobcat in her yard.

The oppressive heat continues, with highs up around 109. The Tucson electric company asked us to cut back our electric use to prevent power outages during this heat wave. I'm sure glad my AC hasn't gone out!

And what's a quilt of life without the sunset? I've had both cotton candy pretty sunset clouds and ominous ones in the past week. They're all beautiful. These views are both from in front of my house.

 Have a colorful day

Desert bracelet

My directions and possible ingredients from my stash.

I've been watching free www.beadshop.com videos, which come out on Wednesday and Friday mornings. (In my pre-Covid life I was always at yoga class then.) The other day there was a tutorial on making a knotted wrap bracelet using large-hole pearls and some other beads. I went into my stash and found some green recycled glass beads to use instead of pearls. The video is titled "Leather and Pearl Wrap" in case you want to watch it.

I put the possibilities in one of my coiled fabric bowls and looked at them for awhile, then decided to just use the green and coral-colored beads.

One hour of stringing and knotting later, I had a bracelet that reminded me of the desert. And it was still morning and I still had the whole afternoon and evening to fill.

We've been having some very dramatic skies lately as the clouds gather for monsoon season but stubbornly refuse to give up rain. 

Top photo is looking across the street from my front porch. Below is turning around and looking at my house the same night. I feel rich with these nightly views! In Gig Harbor, my views from home  were skies obliterated by evergreen trees. Some people thought of those giant trees as guardians, but for me they were monsters stealing the light. It was time to move.

 And just to keep myself sane, I'm still collecting funny quotes. They pretty much sum up how I feel.

Linking up to Nina-Marie's Off-the-Wall Friday: 

off-wall-friday.html

Have a colorful day