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

Visiting friends and Tohono Chul

 

A quilting friend from Washington, Janet, stopped by yesterday with her husband, Dave, while they were in Tucson and we soaked up the beauty at Tohono Chul Park. After wandering through the gardens, we had a delicious lunch at the shady patio bistro. Janet had a bottomless prickly pear margarita, which is a pretty pink color. I had a chicken salad prickly pear croissant sandwich, but I forgot to get a picture. 

Here we are all masked up. It was so fun spending a day with them!

And here are a few photos of flowers, a cactus, and some interesting building details at Tohono  Chul.

This rare crested saguaro reminded us of a ghostly figure with two big eye holes. A "crested" or "cristate" saguaro has a top that is deformed.

I love the pink and coral colors of these walls, with a glimpse of turquoise through the window.

This is a recreation of petroglyphs found in the area.

You can read more about Tohono Chul here: / 

This link takes you to a guide to what's in bloom now at the gardens: in-bloom

It's definitely worth a visit if you're in Tucson.

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Colors of the rainbow in my yard

Red fairy duster

Since I'm all about color, 

I went out into the yard today to get a picture

 of each color in the rainbow:

RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, 

GREEN, BLUE, PURPLE.

I added pink and white for good measure.

Red ocotillo bloom

 Red coral fountain

Pink bougainvillea

Orange-yellow lantana

Orange-yellow cross vine

Yellow wildflowers

Green lady slipper

Blue-green agave

Purple lantana

White bark of palo blanco

White alyssum

And for today's cuteness quota, here are my daughter's five Easter bunnies and my son with his new puppy on Easter morning.

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Ocotillos and other desert greenery

Today's lesson in desert plants is about Fouquieria splendens, commonly known as the ocotillo and pronounced "awk-oh-tee-oh." This spindly semi-succulent is indigenous to the Sonoran Desert (where I live in southern Arizona) and the Chihuahuan Desert of the Southwest.

For much of the year, an ocotillo looks like a cluster of grey, spindly dead sticks, but after rainfall it becomes lush with small green leaves and bright red flowers at the tips. The stems can grow up to 33 feet high and look magnificent against the blue desert sky.

Hummingbirds and bees love the red flowers.

I have an ocotillo in my front yard, but the back yard is much lusher. Here's a view from my patio:

My neighbors get much of the credit for these first two views, with their bougainvillea and palm giving me much viewing pleasure.

Here are closeups of my pink bougainvillea and orange Tangerine cross vine:

And in my hiking news, I got a new bumper sticker!

Here are my hiking buddies on our latest hike, to Pima Canyon. Someone asked if we were in a special club because of our hats, so I asked for some "club" names on Facebook. My favorite response was Shady Ladies by my daughter.

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Tidbits

I'm doing the boring part of my latest quilt -- prepping it for quilting. I had to sew three pieces of batting together, but that was better than buying more. And I lucked out when I found this super wide piece of yardage to use for the back! I bought it ages ago thinking I might make curtains, but that never happened. So now I just have the dreaded basting, which I do with safety pins. 

In other news, I got my second Pfizer vaccine on Saturday and it knocked me for a loop on Sunday. I was fine when I woke up, but after breakfast I started feeling nauseous. Then the chills, fever, and body aches set in really quickly. And extreme fatigue. I spent the day on the couch huddled under layers of blankets wearing a sweater over a sweatshirt over another shirt and two thick pairs of socks and sweatpants. It was almost 80 degrees outside, but I put the heater and fireplace on because I just couldn't get warm. Today I feel fine except for being a little tired.

Earlier, I went to my first outdoor art fair since Covid started. Everyone was masked and I felt safe since we were outside. I noticed a lot of metal art, with an emphasis on suns and saguaros.

And my quote for today,

which describes me exactly:

Have a colorful day

Identifying my plants with Google Lens

A friend just showed me how to use Google Lens to identify plants, so today I went out in my yard and tried to identify everything. The app tells me that the spiky red flowering bush in my backyard that the hummingbirds love is a Baja fairy duster. (Which is also what Kandi said when she visited. I thought it was a bottlebrush bush.)

Google Lens is an image recognition technology that brings up information about objects it identifies using visual analysis. I have the free app on my phone.

Baja fairy duster

Here are some of the other plants I identified or verified:

Mexican holdback tree (in pea family)

Mexican holdback on the back right

Tangerine crossvine

Trailing lantana (which I planted)

More purple lantana in front yard. The tree with the white trunk is a palo blanco. People on a Facebook Tucson group think the tree beside the agave is a mimosa, but I couldn't identify it for sure. It gets puffy feathery white or yellow blooms.

Angelita daisy

Agave, but not sure what kind

Thornless prickly pear

Bougainvillea with prickly pear in background

Yucca, I think, or maybe sotol?

Pencil cactus (actually a succulent)

UPDATE: Now I think this is a Lady's Slipper.

Coral fountain, a potted evergreen

Another potted plant -- not sure of the name

I couldn't identify this tree (above and below). I have three of them in the back yard and they have long feathery fronds that are very graceful. Does anyone know what it is. It's probably native to the Tucson area because I think the previous owner put all native plants in the yard. I like having rocks instead of high-maintenance grass.

Soaptree yucca, which I love

I have numerous clumps of this plant in the back yard, but I couldn't identify it. Maybe bear grass because of the curly ends?

Part of my back yard, proving that you can have green in the desert using native or heat and drought tolerant plants!

If any of you are desert plant experts, let me know if I got anything wrong. 

Have a colorful day