Opening

Taking a break from patio building and tree planting, Lisa and I actually made it into town for an unusual dinner and art opening....

The Arboretum flowers

Here are three of the blooming highlights of this past weekend:



This is the Blue Palo Verde we call Blue, but he sure looks happy here!





























Mr. Berlandier, the Berlandier Acacia has been blooming for months (through the winter!), but never more enthusiastically than here.




















Though she took a while to get established, our Honeysuckle Vine, Betsy, is going "great guns." We hope to see great things from her this year!

Screw!

Screwby, our screwbean mesquite is leafing out. What a great tree! It's an Arizona native, but not nearly as common as other varieties. I can hardly wait until the beans come out...

Who can resist seed pods like these?

Pix from this weekend

Beautiful and unusual

Baja Fairyduster

And the desert shall bloom....

When we bought our property, there was a huge scraped scar left where the leeching field had been installed. I referred to it as The Leechfield Desert. It looked like this:




Here's how it looked this morning:



Here are a couple details:









Desert Marigold















Berlandier Acacia

Take a hike...

The Arboretum hosted a Walk in the Park on Saturday for friends and participants Joseph Boudreaux, Denise Webb, and Sonya and Ivy Roberts. The Walk started with a short jaunt to Signal Hill to see the petroglyphs, and continued with a short hike along Wild Dog Trail to the Avra Valley Overlook. Although there was a dearth of the hoped-for California poppies, we've never seen the brittlebush more prolific.

Here's what it all looked like: