Like many Arizonans, I spent a few of the last days of spring last week in Southern California. As it happens, some of those days were spent in Oceanside, just south of USMC Base Camp Pendleton. Our lodging was adjacent to an old city cemetery, placarded as the “I.O.O.F. Cemetery.” I.O.O.F. is an abbreviation for […]
The Thorny Bougainvillea
The beautiful-but-thorny bougainvillea is ubiquitous throughout the Southwest, so much so that I almost never notice them. The bright “bracts” (specialized colored leaves) surround and visually overwhelm tiny flowers that are so small as to require magnification to fully appreciate. The always-hard-to-spell (at least for me) name derives from French Navy admiral Louis Antoine de […]
Plane Mirror
A couple of weeks ago, I reposted a photo on social media of a house clad in mirrors, so as to blend into its surroundings. At yesterday‘s annual “MayDay” cookout put on at Deer Valley Airport by the Thunderbird Field Chapter of the Experimental Aviation Association, this equally dazzling aircraft flew in to the event. […]