Prescott Pantry

My once-a-week breakfast crowd has decided to be adventurous for a change, moving from one restaurant to another. Today it was The Prescott Pantry out Iron Springs Road.

Been years since I stopped in at The Pantry; the place is now one entire store front bigger than the last time. The deli section looks a hair smaller than on my previous visit, but then I've been around long enough to recall that when The Pantry opened, it was primarily a gourmet food shop, with limited sit-down eating opportunities.

Just a few of the packaged goodies remain on the shelves. Contrast that with the huge menu below.

Just one complaint about the seating -- no convenient knobs for hanging handbags or cameras.

A trip to Home Depot for the ready-made trellis panels makes neat ceiling hangars for a variety of baskets, all quite in keeping with the light, cottage-y decor of the restaurant.

Maybe when it warms up, the breakfast folk will try "sidewalk" dining -- we are definitely returning, a real vote of confidence considering that our guys are real cowboy dude types . The food is good.

Pop Science: ...and rap science and science rock, in short, music about science. Apparently the dotter collects the stuff. She posted the pick of her videos at her blog today.

Nostalgia sells!

It was inevitable, I suppose. After all, my mother's Fiesta Ware long since landed in the collectibles shops and, it seems, every 10-year era now has its day at the antique malls. May I intersperse that I'm convinced that generation this, that and the other is actually an invention of marketing men with something to sell and/or sociology professors with nothing more useful to do. Spoiled youngsters, flattered at the attention, do their best to live up to whatever script the media feature this week.

That 70s Store is in a strip mall facing SR 69 which styles itself "Old Town Prescott Valley." Come on, guys, give me a break! All of Prescott Valley is itself a new town, dating, I believe, from the 70s. However, there are a couple of interesting shops.

Merchandise includes tie dyes galore, if you like that sort of thing, but they do make colorful pictures. Me? I was of an older bohemian generation and was more likely to wear black.

Any number of masks. Curious -- I don't recall the hippies who congregated in Chicago's Old Town wearing masks.

A disappointingly small selection of beads and other jewelry. Beads, of course, were a very big thing.

Also on sale, some rather grand bumper stickers. (Though do bear in mind the latest scientists-say-study which revealed that road rage is the property of drivers who plaster their vehicles with bumper stickers, no matter the sentiment.)

Patches -- are these a 70s thing or do they fit in more comfortably with the store's other line of goods, biker leathers?

And here are the leathers -- quite a contrast to those tie dyes, aren't they? But I suspect that the biker duds are better sellers than the hippy nostalgia. Couldn't resist the pic of the proprietor re-arming the dummy below.

Cool Sites: A splendid anti-burqa Tshirt is available here. Go take a look at an old Arizona slide show courtesy of Prescott Style. If antique farm tools are your thing, this site should be your starting point. Touch the Wind offers a picture of fruiting saguaros and Escaping Suburbia follows a bee swarm being corralled. Enjoy.

Critters updated

Of course, we'll never know just what happened. Last evening, well after nightfall, I heard the local ravens shouting -- a very unusual event. My take? I suspect that the neighborhood raccoons were raiding a nest. Today I found out that the dawg next door alerted his family of nefarious doings in the wee hours. They've still no idea what was up. One more mystery.

However, this hawk was very much out in the open, if an extra long shot away, on that recent outing to the Santa Maria river. I handed the camera to Dana who took a fine, steady picture tho the lens was stretched a bit beyond its resolving power (below).

Meanwhile, back in the city, the acorn woodpeckers have been around and about.

And the last bird note: a tiny nest I discovered while photographing trees as they leaf out. My guess is that it was built by hummingbirds.

In the mammal department: a friend who hunts passed along this picture, taken at night by an automatic camera set-up at his regular haunt over near Camp Wood. It's a ringtail, first cousin to the raccoon. I checked my references and this critter is indeed found as high as 6000 ft. in the Prescott area, preferably in rocky locations. The one time I saw a real live ringtail in nature was down in the Agua Fria canyon near Badger Springs. And in the daytime -- very unusual for this critter who's active at night. Ringtails were sometimes tamed by old-time miners as pets.

Another friend, Bobbi, contributed this picture of a new beaver dam at Stillman Lake. She adds that as many as five young beavers have moved into the Verde headwaters. They got ambitious, too (below), tackling a tree that's 12-15" in diameter. Very interesting: the LH and I found evidence of beavers at King Springs over in nearby Hell Canyon, but that is the only place we ever noted beaver-cut trees in the Upper Verde area.


And here's a relic from the previous owners of my building: a beaver-cut chunk of tree that was mounted over one of the doorways.

A week ago, this mourning cloak butterfly was patrolling out front along the road. The day was chilly and, periodically, the critter would alight, wings spread and then close them, soaking up sunlight and warmth. I never did see him/her locate -- or look for -- a flower.


And, in the reptile corner, a picture of one of my many little lizards who actually sat still long enough for a portrait. The Max cat is big on chasing (and catching) lizards, BTW.

The finale: an H.M. (Highly Magnified) horned toad replica I found at Watters on a recent visit. How could I resist?

Critter Links: Read all about the chicken whisperer over at The One Acre Wood; Escaping Suburbia posted a cool osprey picture and World Photos offers swans and geese along the River Main in Germany (Steve also has a rival grey squirrel visitor at The Red Squirrel. You might also find the Daily Mammal and the Nature Blog Network of interest. If you have the time! There's just a wealth of Good Stuff out there...

My Favorite Succulent

Do you ever dig really, really, really deep into a matter, so much so that you have to learn everything about the subject or collect one of every kind? That happened to me with the plant called sedum. It's a common enough garden plant, tho almost never a feature. Rather, the stonecrop is often used as ground cover or as a rock garden specimen. Fortunately for those of us with decayed granite as our "soil," most sedums need good drainage.

Stonecrops come big and small. For example, the plant above is a large succulent, featuring big clusters of pink blossoms in late summer. Most sedums bloom white or yellow, but that is not their strong feature.

Here are two of the more common varieties (above and below.) My imagination was captured by the many leaf forms of the species and so I collected samples from nurseries here in Arizona and when I was last in Memphis and in Victoria BC. (Yes, I am a common criminal who snuck live vegetable matter and wildflower seeds across the border. Bad GrannyJ.) And if I see an interesting new variation in your garden, I'm likely to snag a sprig, since the odds are that it will easily take root -- and you won't notice that it's missing.

This is one of the better ground covers; a nice grey green.

Only one small variation in leaf form distinguishes this pair: the individual leaflets on the plant above are quite orderly, while those on the form below are more helter-skelter.

This is another large form for covering a lot of ground; the similar plant below is, I believe, a native to this area. It really must be, as it is likely to take over any area where it gets a start.

These two different varieties are a brighter green, which leads me to believe that they need more water. In any event, I give it to them and they prosper.

Here are two very small sedum plants which I'm quite fond of. I particularly like the very small compact guy below, though he gets a bit messy after blossoming.

I am by no means alone in this fascination with sedums. Turns out the Brits have, in time-honored British fashion, formed The Sedum Society, the founder of which wrote the vade mecum on the subject, Sedums: Cultivated Stonecrops. It's a production of Timber Press, publishers who must have my number, because they also publish a beautiful and comprehensive book on another of my favorites -- penstemons.

One final, curious note before I close the book on sedums -- have you ever heard of a sedum roof over a shed or larger structure? Another British concept, much like the old sod roofs cultivated by pioneers in the Plains States:

A sedum roof is like a living carpet. Sedums are low-growing succulents - plants with thick fleshy leaves and stems, which makes them particularly suitable for growing in the inhospitable conditions found on a roof. Native sedums, such as Sedum album, can be seen growing in very hostile conditions such as on dry stone walls, cliffs and Cotswold rooftops. Plants on a sedum roof have to be able to withstand periods of low rainfall, strong drying winds and sun, and they have to grow with the minimum of growing medium.

Oops Note: Just in case you haven't had it up to here with sedums, I did find a site with zillions of photos of stonecrops and other succulents. And while I have you by the coat lapels, here are two very interesting links sent me by the SIL this morning: an Arizona drought map and a site for railroad passengers to trade stories.

Link of the Day

Beth at Firefly Forest has the perfect post for the Halloween season. A superb nature photographer, she has posted a sequence of pictures of bats enjoying the nectar of her hummingbird feeders at night, when the feisty little birds are not around. If the page I have linked is not the right one when you get there, go back one or two more pages. You might also look for her post on planting penstemon; most of her Tucson species are also found in the Prescott area.

Flora & Fauna

Today was a day for critters. Not just the chipmunks, who chirp at regular intervals throughout the day. No. As I was eating breakfast on the back porch, I heard rustlings among some plants. Not to mention the neighbor's dog carrying on. So I approached the sounds. Up rose three grizzled javelina, who sauntered slowly off into a shrubbier area where, presumably, they were invisible.


Turns out they had discovered a heap of dirt given me by another neighbor who was getting rid of his lawn. The dirt was moist, from watering. And it sat atop a two-year mulch pile. Home, no doubt, to some delicious grubs. Perfect for wallowing and for eating.

The animals returned at least three times. Currently they appear to be gone, but I wouldn't count on it. I expect them to return. Regularly.

But I was doubly blessed today. I saw one or two dark birds who flashed white on their wings as they flew. Phainopepla, which I haven't seen in my yard for several years. The mistletoe must be in berry, although I've read that these glossy black flycatchers also like juniper berries and similar fruit.


The picture above is courtesy of T. Beth Kinsey, who posts her photographs and writes her nature observations at Firefly Forest. Although Beth is in Tucson, many of the wildflowers and animals she photographs are found here in Prescott. She, too, has resident javelina, tho hers appear to be better behaved!

Firefly Forest is one of several good Arizona wildlife links I've just posted to the right. Three are specific for the Northern half of the state. Doug Von Gausig, of Nature Songs, specializes in recording the sounds of nature, but he also offers photographs of Verde Valley flowers.

Jim Morgan lives out the Walker Rd. and has photographed lots of local flowers. Catch them at Wings of Nature. And be sure to return -- he keeps adding to his gallery. Back in the Verde Valley, bookseller Lee Dittmann is compiling a Northern Arizona Flora.

Two of the links are more general. Biotic Communities of the Colorado Plateau is a general ecology reference, while Sonoran Desert Naturalist is good desert reading. And for tracking down plant IDs, I recommend the Southwestern Environmental Information Network.

Two other sites from Southern Arizona complete the current list. Curious about that -- nature bloggers seem more common in that part of the state than elsewhere.

If you have other Arizona/Southwestern wildlife sites to recommend, please pass the info along. I'm always looking!