In which some vacationing happens...
Apr. 11th, 2025 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI am currently partway through the Trip to Arizona. I've been through the Desert Botanical Garden (very fun) and also the Musical Instrument Museum and the Heard Museum in Phoenix. This concludes the Phoenix portion of our tourism activities. Right now I'm in Tucson (which, for our foreign readers, is pronounced Two-Sun and not Tuck-Son).
In the Desert Botanical Garden, we looked at cacti. It was hot and I took pictures of things because that's how I do vacationing. We'd just gotten in to the city and hadn't even checked in to our hotel yet. Yes, I do like to overplan.
This is not a cactus, but I love the light colored foliage and the brutal clarity of the light in the desert. It's, er, a weed. Oh well, this is my trip and I'm gonna do what I want.
This is also not a cactus. These are tree catkins because the trees are very busy having tree sex at the moment, at least in Phoenix.
Prickly pear flowers
Wilted prickly pear flowers
The botanical garden had some quail. They were not overly shy. This one is a girl quail:
Here is a boy quail:
I always thought that the dippy little feather thing on their heads was somehow made up and not nearly as prominent as drawings showed it to be.
I stand corrected on the issue of dippy little feather things on quail heads.
Here's a bird nesting in a saguaro crotch. I tried for one in the hole of a saguaro but that didn't happen, so ... this is what you get instead.
Here are amazing spine patterns in cacti. I love how they repeat.
Here is the flowering effort of an ocotillo.
Ocotillo looks basically like shitty spiny sticks that are dangerous and also very dead. But they are not dead. They leaf out when it rains and drop the leaves when the soil dries up again. They can apparently leaf out a couple of times a year, if there's rain to do that.
Are ocotillo cacti? No, no they are not. Look, I have a ton of pictures of cacti, and we'll get to that. I also have stuff from the art museum and from the musical instrument museum (ask me about bridge mustaches on guitars) but I'm not there yet. Today we're going to discuss ocotillo because I thought these were some bullshit stupid plants but they are not.
So, in the spring these things bloom. And they're awesome. They can bloom without leaves if they want. Here is a picture of an ocotillo in bloom (no leaves, just thorny sticks, but with flowers):
And here is an Antelope squirrel. I know it looks passingly like a chipmunk, but it is an antelope squirrel, I bought a field guide for this shit and if you think for a minute that I'm going to pass up a chance to bust out my field guide to Identify Some Shit, you are so terribly wrong. It is a Harris's Antelope Squirrel if you really care.
He is on an ocotillo. He's actually on the same one as is in the previous picture.
Here he is a bit further on:
And here he is, goal achieved:
In the Desert Botanical Garden, we looked at cacti. It was hot and I took pictures of things because that's how I do vacationing. We'd just gotten in to the city and hadn't even checked in to our hotel yet. Yes, I do like to overplan.
This is not a cactus, but I love the light colored foliage and the brutal clarity of the light in the desert. It's, er, a weed. Oh well, this is my trip and I'm gonna do what I want.
This is also not a cactus. These are tree catkins because the trees are very busy having tree sex at the moment, at least in Phoenix.
Prickly pear flowers
Wilted prickly pear flowers
The botanical garden had some quail. They were not overly shy. This one is a girl quail:
Here is a boy quail:
I always thought that the dippy little feather thing on their heads was somehow made up and not nearly as prominent as drawings showed it to be.
I stand corrected on the issue of dippy little feather things on quail heads.
Here's a bird nesting in a saguaro crotch. I tried for one in the hole of a saguaro but that didn't happen, so ... this is what you get instead.
Here are amazing spine patterns in cacti. I love how they repeat.
Here is the flowering effort of an ocotillo.
Ocotillo looks basically like shitty spiny sticks that are dangerous and also very dead. But they are not dead. They leaf out when it rains and drop the leaves when the soil dries up again. They can apparently leaf out a couple of times a year, if there's rain to do that.
Are ocotillo cacti? No, no they are not. Look, I have a ton of pictures of cacti, and we'll get to that. I also have stuff from the art museum and from the musical instrument museum (ask me about bridge mustaches on guitars) but I'm not there yet. Today we're going to discuss ocotillo because I thought these were some bullshit stupid plants but they are not.
So, in the spring these things bloom. And they're awesome. They can bloom without leaves if they want. Here is a picture of an ocotillo in bloom (no leaves, just thorny sticks, but with flowers):
And here is an Antelope squirrel. I know it looks passingly like a chipmunk, but it is an antelope squirrel, I bought a field guide for this shit and if you think for a minute that I'm going to pass up a chance to bust out my field guide to Identify Some Shit, you are so terribly wrong. It is a Harris's Antelope Squirrel if you really care.
He is on an ocotillo. He's actually on the same one as is in the previous picture.
Here he is a bit further on:
And here he is, goal achieved:
no subject
Date: 2025-04-12 05:13 am (UTC)I am delighted. We saw quail and the little squirrels while we were there in February, but there wasn't much in bloom yet.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-13 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 02:03 am (UTC)I LOVE the MIM.
The Botanical gardens are very pretty. Did you go to the zoo down the road?
no subject
Date: 2025-04-18 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-19 03:21 pm (UTC)