The Shady Ladies

Here's the first official portrait of the Shady Ladies, my hiking group! Front: Beth and Tere; back: Barb and me.

Since we're hiking in the desert sun, we wear hats with brims all the time to shade our faces, hence the name (which was suggested by my daughter). Another suggestion was Broads With Brims, from Chris back in Gig Harbor.

On today's hike we had a guest member in the back, a friend of Barb's visiting from Colorado. It's so much more fun hiking with a group of women than it was hiking by my lonesome when I first moved here. I met them back in the fall on a Meetup.com hike and they have enriched my life and saved my sanity! I didn't know anyone except my realtor when I moved here, so these are my first friends!

In the photo above, we're hiking through stands of giant saguaros in the Tucson Mountains. The photo below is from today's hike in the Santa Catalina Mountains.

Here's how I feel about this fabulous group of women, as well as all of my friends from before this move to Tucson:

In other desert news, my ocotillo has finally leafed out and no longer looks like a cluster of dead sticks. It's had the red blooms for weeks but took awhile to get its leaves.

I took this next picture while I was at a stop light. It's one of the more luxuriant ocotillos I've ever seen. Please ignore the zombie sticker, which was put on as a joke by my ex.

I did a post about ocotillos here: ocotillos-and-other-desert-greenery.html

Meanwhile back at home, I'm quilting my latest piece. I started out stitching with the feed dogs up and the walking foot, but it was too cumbersome to keep turning the beast under the needle. So I switched to free motion quilting even though my stitches aren't very even. Life is too short to make quilting a chore.

Have a colorful day