Slow Guy

With one eye slightly open, this desert tortoise has the look of, "Gee, will the holidays ever get here?" as he peers out from under a rock at the Desert Museum near Tucson. Hoping to get a better photo of him,  I have visited his tortoise enclosure several times this fall, but this slow guy is an elusive creature.

Maybe I will try again this weekend when the weather is supposed to turn quite cool and rainy. He might be waiting for a change in the weather.

Subtle Desert Colors

The colors of the desert circulate around subtlety. The greens are grayed and lean toward blue, sometimes. The grays are are somewhat blue, yet have touches of brown.

When mixing colors for desert watercolors, you move from bright, pure colors to their complements, those that are more teal and taupe and gray.

One of my charts takes phthalo blue and combines it with yellow ochre and raw sienna. As the two colors mix, first a big puddle of one with a touch of the other, the color dips toward the desert.

An agave plant in a pot, photographed against a stucco wall, has those tones. I can see the blues and the browns as I ask myself the question, "What colors could I use to create this plant in watercolor?"

It's that subtlety that I am learning to see as I take out paints and find a palette that works.

Avra Valley Sunset

There's a new 24 hour McDonalds north of here. You turn off at the Marana exit on Interstate 10 to get there.

I was hungry for a Big Mac so I headed out there tonight. The sun sets so very early in December, but to the west, back behind the mountains, the sun was still doing its thing.

This photo is the result. That tiny bright dot almost directly above one mountain peak is an airplane headed into the Marana airport. Smeary and blurred, yet vibrant, the evening desert colors were incredible.

Rain in the Desert

While out golfing this afternoon I took this photo of raindrops on the windshield of a golf cart. The clouds had been heavy all day but the rain just would not start.

Finally, on the back nine, there were a few minutes of rain, just enough to see the rounded patterns of drops on the cart paths and these few on the windshield. Sometimes, here in the desert the rain struggles to reach the ground, but today it finally made it. Even the scent of the air changed as moisture freshened the atmosphere.

Tucson hasn't had rain for over a month and a really good rain would feel good. It is hard to imagine how dry California and other drought areas must be. I just know that even these few drops felt good as today there finally was rain in the desert.

Aloe, Aloe!

Aloes, big ones, little ones, are very popular in the desert landscaping around Tucson. Among the several that are planted at our winter house is this one that is in a big turquoise pot.

I groomed it a few days ago. Took off the dead ends of the leaves and trimmed some of the leaves back so that the pot would fit up against a stucco wall. Then I photographed it and transformed the photo into this textured, spiky plant image.

I like the sturdiness of the aloe plants. They have grace, gentle curves, and they are not quite as prickly as their fellow landscape plants, the agaves.

Chollas in Bloom

The chollas are blooming. The plants are spiny, full of stems and prickers. They look like a shrub that forgot to grow leaves. But in the spring, their blossoms redeem them. These two images are probably staghorn cholla or pencil chollas. The blooms are red to orange to copper to burgundy in color.

The structure of the staghorn cholla, lots of stem and branches that emanate from a central trunk, appear to be a reddish brown color. Some sources label the stem color as purple. The copper blossoms accent the reddish branches, a delightful change up from all of the desert yellow and white flowers.

Gila (Gulp) Monster

"Wanda, come and look at what is in our yard." My neighbor Sandy was standing at the front door yesterday noon with this look of wonder on her face.

A walk across the street and into the neighbor's side yard revealed the presence of a large, lumbering lizard called a gila monster. With orange and gray bead like skin, this critter was crawling along the wall, trying to get back to its desert habitat.

The beaded surface of the skin is raised and each segment is usually a single color. Look closely in this photo and you can see the hexagon shape of the grandmother's flower garden quilt pattern in the center of this guy's back.

One website says that the gila monsters are emerging from hibernation about now, mid March, here in the desert. I'm guessing that this critter is hungry and is on the prowl for a bird's nest full of eggs, something to satisfy a three month hunger.

To read more about the gila monster on the website of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, click HERE.

Oh, and did I say that I watch where I walk more carefully after meeting this guy?

Arizona Birds

An Arizona cardinal sang and sang to us from a treetop this morning while we were on our walk. Red and stately, the cardinal was a highlight of the morning.

Cactus wrens, big guys in the wren family, like to perch on top of the saguaros. Look how this one has carefully placed its feet between the cactus spines.

A curve-bill thrasher, yellow eyes blazing, posed in ironwood trees. This guy stayed put long enough for me to take several images of him. Look how firmly this bird is grasping the tree branch where he has perched.

All of these birds are common to the Sonora desert around Tucson. These images were taken on Dove Mountain in Marana, north of Tucson.

Canyon Cows

Grass fed beef. That's what we are looking at here. Driving through Box Canyon on Forest Route 62 south of Tucson this week, we came across cattle grazing on the hillsides. Busy bovines all, these critters were contentedly turning grass that we humans cannot eat into protein that we can eat.

There were no sacks of grain or feeder troughs in sight, although these cattle might be rounded up and "finished" with a month or two of grain. Surely these range grasses are not permeated with antibiotics or growth hormones. Just sunshine and grass and water -- that's what these Arizona cattle are consuming.

Now, there is a lot that could be said about the great amount of water and grass that a cow consumes. Then we could talk about methane emissions from the latter end of the animals. For now, put that aside and consider the simplicity of grazing animals on grasslands. Properly done, the raising of canyon cows results in some mighty fine burgers and steaks, locally made and no doubt locally consumed.

Tale of Two Canyons: Madera Canyon & Box Canyon

Just an hour's drive south of Tucson, the Santa Rita Mountains and Coronado National Forest provide the traveler with desert to mountain and back to desert landscapes. Paved roads lead back in to Madera Canyon where you can drive up the canyon as high as 5500 feet. Trails that lead up Mt. Wrightson start at the highest picnic and parking area.

Popular with birders and hikers and bicyclists, the area had a lot of visitors, some of them watching birds, for a midweek afternoon in March. Steady traffic on the roads kept us watching and hopping as we stopped to photograph the scenery.

Majestic Arizona sycamore trees are found throughout the canyons in the Santa Ritas. This giant tree, probably 3 feet in diameter, stood along the wash that runs down the canyon.

White bark and gnarled trunking patterns make these trees distinctive. They remind me of the wonderful trees on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing, Michigan. The Michigan trees are American plane trees and are found in the eastern part of the United States.

The Arizona sycamore is from the same family, but is found in New Mexico, Arizona, and part of Mexico, primarily on the sky islands which are mountains that rise out of the southwestern desertlands.

Plane trees are also found in Great Britain where they are of the variety known as London plane trees.

After leaving Madera Canyon, we drove Forest Road 62 through Box Canyon, headed east for State Route 83. The road, improved but not paved, clings to the side of the canyon for a portion of the drive. Although there are no guard rails and some of the bends are pretty scary, Ed drove slowly but surely. Just when I was feeling like we were in a pretty remote part of the world, we met two bicyclists headed west and enjoying their afternoon exercise. They looked for all the world like sensible people who knew what they were doing, so I relaxed my grip on the overhead handle in the car and started watching the scenery.

Forest Road 62 meets up with Highway 83 after passing through ranching country, complete with grazing cattle, windmills, and lot of water tanks. We drove this route in the afternoon, finishing just before sunset when the low light casts a golden glow on the grass and the landscape lights up. At this point we met more traffic, mostly ranchers in pickups and people headed to their ranch homes for the night.

From the junction of FR 62 and Hwy. 83, we turned north. It was about an hour's drive back to the south side of Tucson where Hwy. 83 meets Interstate 10. We had started from Exit 63 on Hwy. 19 at Green Valley about 3 pm and were back in Tucson, having dinner by 7:30 pm. The route for our adventurous drive is marked in orange dots on the map below.

Early Desert Wildflowers

Brittlebush clumps, with their lemony yellow daisy-like blossoms, are the harbingers of an early wildflower season in southern Arizona. This clump, photographed against a wall, is at the height of blooming.

One weather app on my mobile phone shows that the Tucson area has had 0.02 inches of rainfall so far this year. That's not a lot of rain, so the big storm front that is approaching from the Pacific will be welcome this weekend.

So, why are the wildflowers starting to bloom, you ask? The local paper says that above average temperatures in February coupled with fall rains are bringing on the early flowers.

Brittlebushes seem to come first. Some years there are sections of Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson that are yellow with brittlebushes along the roadway.

Moon & Venus

The crescent moon floats in the early morning sky while bright, bright Venus shines with an intensity that only early risers get to see. Yesterday morning, on February 26th, these two heavenly bodies were much closer together.

This morning's show is less dramatic but crystal clear and showy in the desert southwest sky. The temperature at 5:30 am was about 50, a far cry difference from the single digit chill that is lingering over much of the northern states this late in February.

Stone Cabin On Dove Mountain

Much of the land along Dove Mountain Boulevard in Marana, just north of Tucson, was once a part of a 1300 acre parcel owned by rancher Eugene "Cush" Cayton. The Cayton ranch, known as the T Bench Bar Ranch, was sold for development in 1985 but vestiges of the ranching years are visible in the Tortolita Mountains.

Here's a little stone structure, a cabin with a chimney, doors, and windows that overlooks Dove Mountain Boulevard. Constructed of stone with masonry filling, the cabin is hard to spot during the day when the colors of the stone blend into the hills and boulders around it.

In the evening when the sunlight slants low in the sky, the cabin is lit up with the warm sienna and ochre tones of evening light.

In the photo above, the cabin can be seen within the darkened oval area. One account of the Cayton ranching years says that the cabin was built by Cush Cayton's brother who lived there. Another source said that Cush Cayton built the cabin for his wife Inez. The Caytons were known for their entertaining. Cush Cayton was a cowboy and a poet, according to stories about him.

As I walk on Dove Mountain Trail, along the road, I often look for the Cayton cabin and wonder about its story. It seems to be located in a spot where if you looked southwest from the cabin, you would have a commanding view of the Twin Peaks over in the Tucson Mountains. One can imagine lovely winter evenings, sitting by the fire in the Cayton cabin, watching the sun setting over the majestic Tucson basin.

Easy Riders

I slipped out of the car at one of the picnic areas at Saguaro National Park today. The late afternoon light was carving shadows into the side of Mt. Wasson. It was one of those views that I'm thinking I might be able to use in my watercolor explorations someday.

Returning to the car, I felt something sort of weighing me down. I closed the car door and looked down.

There were four good sized chunks of cholla cactus, hitchhiking on my jeans jacket. In the desert you always carry a wide tooth comb.

That's what I pulled out to remove these giant pricklies, the easy riders, from my jacket.

Desert Museum Album

Cruz, the new mountain lion

An afternoon spent at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum resulted in some up close and personal images of many of the animals. Here are a few favorites.

Desert bighorn ram

Prairie dog

Great blue heron

More HDR

My trusty tripod and new Nikon camera got a workout this evening. Here's a sunset HDR (high dynamic range) photo with Kitt Peak in the distance. That's one of the observatories sticking up like a watchtower on the mountain in the distance. I had to raise the tripod up really high to get this image. Think full extension, no stepladder needed.

This image shows a leaning saguaro with Arthur's Hill in the background. I liked the sunset flair, so when I processed the photo series into this HDR image, I emphasized the bright colors in the clouds.

Wimp in the Desert

I'm a wimp. Ed headed back to Michigan and I stayed in the desert. I took a look at the class schedule at the Art Institute at Arizona Sonora Desert Museum and decided to get two more classes under my belt before I head back to cold weather country.

That's my excuse for avoiding this polar vortex experience that most of the U. S. is dealing with this week. The temperatures have been close to freezing for several nights here, but that's not even a talking point when you consider that back home zero seems like a warm front.

The Wimp is enjoying some more art classes. I'm finally taking watercolor and learning some pen and ink techniques. Both classes are required courses for the Nature Illustration Certificate Program that the Art Institute offers and when I finish these two, I will have five of twelve required classes done.

I'm surprising myself with how much I like doing art. On a whim, I took the Composition class two winters ago. I figured that after 15 or so years of designing quilts and writing for the quilting industry, it would be interesting to see design through the eyes of the art world. I liked it so much that I thought I would try some basics -- sketching and perspective work. That hooked me and I'm on my way through a program designed with intentionality and challenge.

So taking classes is a pretty good thing for the wimp in the desert who is learning during these winter months away from the Midwest.

Into The Sun

Pointing a camera at the sun is one of those things that one should not do. Life is filled with stuff that like that. Things that we know we aren't supposed to do, but try anyway and make it work.

This image, taken in Saguaro National Park this afternoon, works out pretty good once a Photoshop filter is applied and there is some digital fiddling with the photo. I like the way the cactus plants stand tall, as if they are defying the sun to set. The western hills figure into the picture, but don't really have much to say about anything. They are the backdrop to the drama between the stubborn saguaros and the ever powerful sun.

Still, it all works. The sun gets its say. The saguaros hang out to see another day. The hills hold firm, even if the camera is pointed into the sun.

The Out West Quilt

Gloria Swartzendruber came strolling into the Graywood Designs office in Pigeon early this month with an incredible quilt that will be auctioned at the Northern Michigan Mennonite Relief sale in a few weeks. Gloria and her husband John found the quilt in a Texas shop last winter. They purchased it and are donating it to the auction which raises money for Mennonite relief work all across the globe.

This quilt is on display this weekend at the Pigeon District Library's annual Quilt show which starts tomorrow, Thursday, July 18 in the community rooms of the Library. Quilts will be on display throughout Summerfest Weekend.

The quilt's title is "Out West I" and its designer and maker is Peggy Hanson of Ingram, Texas. The quilt is 59" x 75" so it would be an excellent choice for a wall quilt or it could be displayed on a bed.

Gloria likes to applique and took great delight in pointing out all the choices of fabrics and texture that Peggy made as she created each block. There are suede fabrics, curly fabrics, burlap with frayed edges, batiks with painterly swirls, embroidered accents, and lots of other special touches in this mastery of needlework.

The Texas longhorn cow is coming right out of the quilt. Frayed burlap, looking like dust, adds to the illusion. His eyes are on the viewer. His legs are in motion.

The long horn block is an artful combination of motion and color. You can almost hear the creature snorting as you look into his eyes.

Peggy's scorpion has wonderfully threatening claws and a spiny tail that would scare even the bravest insect lover.

Other blocks portray saguaro and ocotillo cactuses, a native dancer, an armadillo, roadrunner, cowboys, horses, a windmill, and lots more.

The entire quilt is a wonderful example of needlework design and execution at its finest.


The Quilt Auction takes place on Saturday, August 3 at the Oscoda County Fairgrounds near Fairview, Michigan. All proceeds benefit the fine relief work that the Mennonites do so well. If you are interested in bidding on this quilt, let me know. I'm sure that I can arrange a proxy bidder for you at the auction.

Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler

More Golden Agave

I really wasn't kidding when I wrote in yesterday's blog post that the Mexican Golden Agave is quite tall.

Here's a photo of the plant that I photographed at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. I had the camera for yesterday's image trained on the yellow part of the blossom spike, right about where you can see sunlight.

Here's a LINK to learn more about this desert plant.

For those of you who have read this far, if you Google "Mexican golden agave," you will find lots of links to tequila since "golden" is often used to describe that particular "cultivar" of alcohol so common to the popular drink of, gee, what do we call it? Ah, the margarita!

Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler