Courtyards rock!

If you walk from the downtown library to the downtown post office, you'll pass this lovely little building every time. Moniker? The Courtyard Building. What else?

I've always been entranced by courtyards. How to describe them? Cool. Sensuous. Private. Secure. Up-scale. Ultra suitable for warm climates.

I've long had my own couryard dream. Somehow acquire four out of service railroad box cars, the longer the better. Reefers*, of course -- this is Arizona. Next, you somehow scoogie them into a box of box cars, with an atrium in the center, all on your 10 or 20 acre parcel. At this point, let your imagination do the rest of the architecture.

Dreams aside, if I needed a classy downtown office, here's where I'd locate if at all possible.

Pleasant plantings and a fountain.

Nice heavy Spanish style doors plus plenty of wrought iron window guards, just in case.

No idea how old The Courtyard Building is -- or its history; to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a building should be at least 50 years old, meaning I lived in a lot of "historic" places in my younger years. I spent over 30 minutes chasing down various lists of Historic Places in Prescott and Arizona and nowhere did I find a listing for The Courtyard Building. But then the name may have been changed or possibly the building is included in the general listing of the Courthouse Plaza Historic District. What I did discover in consulting The Google is that we have between 525 and 700+ official historic places in Prescott; here's a bobtailed listing of Yavapai County historic places.

*refrigerator car -- well insulated for hot summers, cold winters.

Linkage: A great site if you track pop culture is Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium; he features some fantastic body art! Another set of pictures you will enjoy: Touch Wind down in the desert has photographed the first cactus blossoms of the season. And welcome a couple of new Prescott bloggers: Lemegeton and Rick & Debbie's Place.

Findings Found

And all of them priced under $1! In my sewing drawer which I open maybe once or twice a year. Because I happened to be looking for pins, I pulled out these assorted findings. Isn't that an interesting word? No idea where it came from, but it is the term used in the garment trade for those gizmos necessary to finish a piece of clothing.

49 cents max!!! To tell the truth, I'm not sure that I bought these cards individually; I vaguely recall buying a box of sewing Stuff at the annual Lab School rummage sale down at the University of Chicago long, long ago. I suspect that the dime cards predate my adulthood, though the grippers and velcro are post WWII. BTW, the elastic cord (which I threw out) still had a bit of stretch left in it.

Woolworth. Anybody reading this remember the five and dime stores? S.H. Kress, Kresge, Woolworth -- and Ben Franklin stores in small towns. I believe that Kresge morphed into K-Mart, but the others are but hazy memories of cheaper days (and cheaper wages, too). Oh, yes, there was Barbara Hutton, the Poor Little Rich Girl, heiress to one of the dime store fortunes; she was the 40s equivalent to whatsername Hilton, with a lot more style. Married more often, too, as I recall.

This card hid a small needle kit; I included it to show that Lileks is not the only blogger who features commercial art of bygone times. Of course, it reminds me of the time I allowed an acquaintance to waste a good hour of my time practicing his Filter Queen spiel; it was agony for me and horribly demeaning for the guy making the pitch.

Squirrel Link: I've mentioned German red squirrel several times; now Alone on a Limb writes that he has been adopted by an adolescent squirrel.

Next Day Update/Woolworth: OMG -- Woolworth does live on -- not only in the UK, but in Germany, Austria and Cyprus, where one-time subsidiaries maintain a separate existence. Foot Locker is the old Woolworth group in a new guise and in Australia, a totally unrelated Woolworth is the biggest retailer. All this according to Wikipedia.

There it was, lying on the ground...

I see all sorts of odds and ends left behind beside the road or next the sidewalk. While the owner of that bike might have climbed down to the creek bed, which is just out of the picture to the left, I really doubt that he was down there trying to catch crawdads. More likely someone lifted that bike and left it behind when he got where he was going.

I see dead signs of various sorts when I go walking. If on the ground, they're likely to be advertising a candidate or a yard sale; on a telephone pole, lost dogs and cats. This particular sign was more unusual.

One can imagine a variety of reasons that someone might cast aside a book whose cover proclaims it is all about understanding feminine psychology. A break-up, maybe ... or the wrong slant on feminism ...

...or maybe the owner of the book simply lost his glasses.

Now, if I want to scrounge a suitcase, I wouldn't normally go walking down Park Avenue. But there it was the other day.

Complete with a discarded CD. Wonder what that back story is.

I'll end these musings with this pretty plaque that was just lying in a neighbor's yard. Let's hope that it is mounted one of these days in a spot where passers-by can admire it.

A Link & a Note: My SIL finds obscure & curious sites, such as Strange Maps. where you can find out the GNP equivalent between each of the 50 states and a foreign country or that infamous Absolut ad. And, as a former Chicagoan, I must comment on the lion shooting in My Fair Former City. The town is abuzz -- and it should be. The location where the cougar met his end was not the Loop, but it was pretty doggone far into the older city neighborhoods. Apparently people have been reporting sightings for some little time and been pooh-poohed. Sound familiar?

Girls on the bench

If you walk along our streets, one of these days you'll come across this pensive little girl sitting on an elegant old bench. Both look to be out of another, earlier age, plopped down in a shady spot in twenty-first century Prescott.

I would say that the first little girl has a bonnier spot for reading; the recent bronze in the public library's garden has to enjoy her book in the direct glare of the Arizona sun -- a great way to display the sculpture but one helluva way to relax with a book! However, this girl has a great advantage; she is protected by that wonderful life size cougar who always sits up on the brick wall behind her.

Linkages: First to Brittany to view tiny tadpoles still in the egg, but almost ready to emerge thanks to excellent photography by Box Elder. Next, zoom down to Tucson to see the many murals that adorn walls there. While in the south of Arizona, stop by Firefly Forest for a remarkable pair of pictures of yellow warbler males duking it out. And, as ever, enjoy!

Bird amenities

Surely ours isn't the only small city that can support a shop strictly for bird watchers -- or a column in the local paper all about birds. But we do indeed have such a store, Jay's Bird Barn, over by the north Safeway; furthermore, the proprietor, Eric Moore, writes a weekly article for the Courier. But I shouldn't be surprised. I've been collecting pictures of bird feeders and bird houses and bird baths all over the area. There are ever so many. In fact, a US Fish & Wildlife Service survey revealed that over 50 million Americans spend some time watching wild birds. No reason that Prescottonians should be any different.

Many people buy bird houses for their yards; some even build them, tho I've never before seen such an extravaganza as this homemade residence on sale at Batterman's. I wonder if a bird ever alighted on the structure; my suspicion is that the architect probably kept thinking of new improvements to add and just never got around to mounting it. Besides, I doubt if any birds would bother to unhook those latches.

On the other hand, here are a couple of handmade homes situated high enough that they just might entice a small bird couple.

This bird abode was too far away for me to decide whether it was homemade or store-bought. Also I'm not sure whether it is really suitable for live-in birds or is merely yard decor, like far too many of the houses that I've seen.

Most often, the cute would-be nests are located within arm's reach; if I were a self-respecting bird, I'd stick to the trees for safety's sake.

I wonder if the apartment building above has ever had tenants. The unit below may have -- it was very high up on a pole.

Again, I suspect that some feeders are decorative rather than utilitarian.

But, again, locate the house (above) or feeder (below) high enough and customers should show up. Note that there are ropes so that the little nesting box may be cleaned out periodically. As for the feeder below, I walk under it every so often; it's so high up that a ladder is in order.

Some straight-forward feeding stations (above, below).

Of course, in our dry climate, water is a necessity for the birds, tho I don't see nearly as many bird baths. Probably because it's a lot more work to keep them filled -- and clean.

Then there is the cat problem....

Linkage: There's this big picture of me over at Pictures and More plus a song about Never Been to Prescott; what can I say, Steve, except thank you!

Then and now

In 2002, Westcliffe Publishers produced a coffee table book to lust for, Arizona Then and Now. Each page in the oversized book shows historic pictures from way back when on the left hand and the modern view on the right. One of the coolest pictures in the entire book is of the Santa Fe bridge over Hell Canyon under construction in 1895 (the same bridge that stands today, BTW). Photographer Allen Dutton focused on change.

Going through my backlog of photographs, I happened across a different pairing of photos, showing, not change, but the changelessness of the outback. Top in April, 2006, and lower picture mid-March, 2008. Admittedly, a short 2-year time span doesn't measure up as a big deal in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand, not much appears to have changed -- except that the hood on the big truck has been closed (or, more likely, fell shut). I only wish I had shot this year's picture from the same vantage point. Location, by the way, along the Santa Maria Road. I should make a point of stopping by in another few years to see if those vehicles have gone anywhere or if they're truly a fixture of the landscape, rusting in place.

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...