A Stroll Through Tohono Chul

The kids wanted to do something.  I needed to be within thirty minutes of the house because the thermostat decided to give up the ghost last night and the repair man would be calling when he was on his way.  TBG wanted to come, too.  Finding a location was not much of a challenge; we drove two miles and entered the nicest private botanical garden in Tucson.

It didn't look like much. This isn't a time when the desert blooms.

Cacti are hunkering down, readying themselves to absorb the winter rains.  SIR thought these looked like they'd overdosed on valium.  It was a much funnier explanation than the truth, which is that this is how they grow.

  The succulents are thick and strong but flowerless. 

The ethnobotanic garden may have had seeds germinating beneath the dirt, but all we saw were the fences and the ground.  The children's garden was similarly bloom-free.

Still, we walked amidst orange and yellow tecoma blooms, swatting little gnats which descended around TBG's head, ignoring the rest of us.  He's a sweetie, my guy, that's for sure.  All species seem to recognize that.  We sought shelter from the swarm in one of the courtyards displaying small gems, like these echinocerus crouching among the rocks.

 These were the only cactus flowers we saw.

They looked like someone had placed a necklace on the torch.

 This looked soft and inviting until the boys got up close and not too personal with the spikes hiding beneath the greenery.

 A living fence ... a garden in a concrete bunker... an outdoor display case.... we couldn't decide.

The foliage was uninteresting for the most part, but the fauna was out and about.

 Some of it was alive, lest you think you'd wandered into another post.

 Most of it was metal, and creepy.

 Created from found objects, these vultures left us all a little uncomfortable.

 Still, we couldn't seem to turn away from them.

The signage was interesting, too.  

What are DRUSY VUGS, we wondered?

 Isn't this repetitious?  

Recognizing that we were losing the positive attitudes with which we'd entered the gardens, we strolled back to the car and headed to Wildflower for lunch.  

There's nothing that a chicken salad sandwich on the world's best bread won't cure.

*****

DRUZY is a coating of fine crystals on a rock fracture surface, vein or within a vug or geode.