Where Creativity Takes Wing
Behold! I am the Lizard Lord! Watch as I do pushups to impress all the ladies! I am Lord of all I survey, which is pretty much… this wall, um, and some trees, and oh, some brick planters… and doves! I totally survey the doves too!
Did I mention I’m related to giant dinosaurs? And so what if I’m only a foot long?
Laugh not at my blue belly, for I rule this backyard!
…Signed, the Spiny Desert Lizard.
…am a most notable rabbit.
Look for me and you won’t see me – for I live beneath the Oleander, and I like to look like a rock, even as I nibble. See? Or rather, not?
Yet, here I am, with my impeccable desert camouflage.
Mistress Cat must be so jealous as she watches me through the glass, as I and my large family choose the parking lot in which to romp.
I am, indeed, a notable rabbit.
Arizona has some fascinating uses of line in the natural landscape. Here are a few examples.
Here is a proud cactus who sits outside my Carniceria – I loved the contrast so much I had to make it into an art print.
This tree draws a fantastic line at my local park…
And these radial lines are interesting in their interplay. They are pines from that same park.
These are lines courtesy of my acacia tree, painted against the summer sky.
I’d have to say my favorite place is Arizona.
Can anyone doubt it?
The views, the weather, the critters, the plants, the people, the food. It’s great!
I liked this cactus so much against its blue background, I turned it into an “art photo!”
View!
And view!
And huge prickly pear!
And a cool tree!
This is at my local park, which is one of my favorite places – within my favorite place.
The dry season is upon us.
In Arizona, it lasts from late fall through midsummer pretty much. Summer contains the wonderful, fickle, thunder-filled Monsoon. But the rest of the year is pretty dry. Now, in mid to late April, we’re warming up nicely. Soon it will be time for me to be careful when touching the steering wheel of my car. I’ve gotten blisters before. Right now my swamp cooler, an evaporative device, is working very well. It’s a cheap form of air conditioning – a fan blows air through something like a damp sponge to cool the air down. So it won’t work in high humidity. Right now if we run the thing full blast we can get the house down to sixty degrees or so.
In Tucson, keeping cool is an art form. Sure, you could sit in a modern home and turn on the air conditioning. Yet, it’s much more fun to find a shady spot, perhaps in a wonderful old adobe building, with open archways to let in the breezes, and sip some cold agua fresca or maybe some real Mexican Coke in the glass bottle. Yes, it is better. Maybe a bowl of ceviche when you get hungry. Now, that’s staying cool in style. My own place is flat roofed, with heat-shedding cinderblock walls and cool tile floors. You can open the front and back doors, shut the screens, and let the breezes flow through. Keep the blinds drawn in the daytime, open them at night, and you’ve got a house that stays at a livable temperature on all but the hottest days.
Sometimes, though, I don’t hide from the heat. I get a cool beverage and sit out and bake. Even for just a few minutes, on a work break. Heat like this is a touchable thing, it’s like being hugged by the day. It eases my A/C chilled bones and reminds me I’m alive.
A post made especially for me, it seems!
..turned your furnace on for the first time on November 17th,
…commonly see folks walking across a busy street with a stoplight just yards away,
…have doors held for you on a daily basis,
…know that chimichangas originated in Pima County,
…just saw 10% on the hygrometer and smile,
…think it’s not the holidays without tasty tamales,
…think bacon is a perfectly normal thing to wrap around a hot dog,
…know what a bolillo is,
…stop to wonder why bolillo isn’t in the spell check dictionary,
…check and fix the spelling to make sure,
…still wonder why it isn’t in the dictionary,
…regularly barbecue the Thanksgiving turkey,
…don’t act shocked when you see a T-rex by a McDonalds,
…know that mesquite beans are edible,
…have ever taken a swim the day after Christmas,
…wear a jacket when it’s below 70 degrees…
You cannot control the sky. I think that’s a truism – ask any pilot, mariner, or photographer. So taking a picture of the sky can be the very essence of chaos. Today’s photo challenge celebrates this.
Cacti grow large here in Arizona. However, usually they don’t grow beyond a certain level – the size seen up in the featured image, in fact. I normally don’t see them grow more than four or feet tall at most, usually less.
That was, until I saw this old girl.
There she is, roughly eight to ten feet tall, and so big and old that she’s actually developed bark on her trunk. Now THAT’S a cactus. Here’s another view from the same walk.
It’s a little hard to tell scale because of the angle, but she’s big. Dare I say…
…a Giant?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/giant/
Mindflight 
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