Arizona Living

For those of you who have been to visit us - and for those of you who want to, but haven't yet - here are some photos that I hope you enjoy.

Here's a photo of our front yard - you can see Jim's saguaro has arms that get bigger every year. Jim bought me a saguaro for my birthday and it's got one arm - it's behind the trees.

We got this huge ocotillo lfor free after the wind knocked it down in front of our local Home Depot - we waited and waited for them to put it up again. Finally we went and talked to them and they said we could have it. Don't the red blooms look festive...

Our palo verde trees still have some of their yellow blooms. This is where the little old house used to sit - before we built the new one.

I started feeding the cardinal and quail back in 1980 and now Jim and I buy our bird seed in 50 pound bags at Costco.

We've always had at least one male cardinal since then - they seem to be territorial and harrass any other cardinals else except their own baby.

Once in a great while we'll see more than one adult male for a few days - then after lots of feathers flying and aggressive chirping, we'll be back to one male and one female again.

When it's really hot in the summer, we have so much wild life who come to enjoy the water and/or take a bath - it's like having a nature park right outside our back door.

We see rabbits every day and coyotes and javelinas (that's like a wild pig) once in a while.

One time we even had 2 emus that got loose from a neighbor's yard - that was exciting!

We have 4 different kinds of ground squirrels, and all kinds of birds: quail, doves, hawks, owls, boat-tailed grackles, brown-headed cowbirds, starlings, cactus wrens, sparrows, house finches, etc.

When I can find a dead snake close to our house on the road, I take it home on a big stick and wait for the turkey vultures to find it. They are such interesting birds! You can see right through their nostrils to the other side!

We have a total of 5 citrus trees: one lemon, 2 kinds of grapefruit - red/pink and yellow, and 2 kinds of oranges - Valencia for juice and Navel for eating. Before I moved here, I wasn't aware of any orange but the Navel ?!?

Here's a picture of our pink grapefruit tree - it's amazing how much fruit that little tree can hold!

The rabbits eat the citrus leaves as high up as they can reach - they must taste awfully good! That's why these branches of our lemon tree look so funny - all you can see is branch and lemons that haven't turned yellow yet.

This year the woodpeckers discovered and attacked almost all the Navel oranges and we only got one from the whole tree before they ruined it. They drill a small hole to get at the juices and, once they're done, the ants move in and then that's it...

We're thinking we'll have to cover the tree next year in order to get any fruit ourselves.

Jim bought me some fabulous solar lights at Costco for my birthday this year and we set them up to illuminate our ranch gate, some of the saguaros and some of our favorite trees.

They look so festive at night and it's great to think we're not using any electricity - just free energy from the sun!

But my photos didn't turn out so well - they're all so dark that all you can see is little pinpricks of light...
Here's a photo of our ranch gate - it's seems like the perfect entrance along with our split-rail fence.

It's so tall that Jim has to put a big ladder in the bag of the pickup truck and lean it against one of the posts in order to replace the letters that fall down once in a while after a big storm. And that's with me standing in the bed of the truck and hanging on to his legs because I'm afraid he's going to fall - it's scary!

This picture of our front yard from the road was taken after our spring grasses had dried up.

After the rains we usually get in January, you wouldn't recognize our place - sometimes the grass is so plentiful that we even have to mow! Otherwise, we'd have a fire hazard.

Here's the exoskeleton of a wolf spider that I found on our front porch in front of the garage door. Boy, did it scare me at first!

When the spider molts, it leaves it's old outside layer and walks away.

We often find these exoskeletons on our porch - the rough cement must make it easier to slip off the outside layer.

Here's a beautiful desert sunset - taken right off our back porch.

Although the road in front of our house has been paved now - there's still enough sand being flung into the air from the wind to create beautiful colors in the early evening.

We do have spectacular sunsets!