What's to be seen on an afternoon's walk? Sights that range from the sublime (seed pod, above) to the, well, mundane problems of every day living (below.)
To report: the weather was springlike; the locale, two alleys and Grove Avenue. (I've always wondered about that name -- was it descriptive of beautiful old trees long gone for wider streets or was it dedicated to a city father (or land developer)?
There was this sign on an alley door; particularly poignant to one who spent her school years in Jacksonville, Florida, where the Seaboard was an important institution.
And, just beyond an alley fence, a tree the surgeons had thoroughly lollypopped. Yet come summer, it will be leafy green and no one will be the wiser.
At the credit union over on Grove Street, the landscape gravel had been carefully raked and carelessly walked upon. But the circle was deliberate. A first cousin of graffiti, I'd say.
I finally got reasonably good pictures of Gene Galazan's latest junkyard horses, part of the recent landscaping at Prescott College. More details in a later post.
Between the sidewalk and the pavement, rocks describe a small watercourse -- the land is slanting toward Butte Creek here.
OK, I couldn't resist doing an arty shot. In fact, I made several pictures of similar plants.
One of the nice things I've discovered about citified aspens is that graffiti artists leave them alone. No initials or hearts -- or historic carvings by Basque shepherds -- on these young trees over at Prescott College.
Now here's something you don't see very often in a mountain town -- an ultra-lightweight racing bike. The standard Prescott bicycle has a beefy frame and fat tires, the better to cope with rocky mountain trails hereabouts.
Which mountains still keep Butte Creek running nicely.
At the CVS drug store on Miller Valley, spring has been declared. I couldn't figure out what purpose the items above serve except to transmit colored light. The plastic angels, of course, are for this year's garden.
I'm more inclined to rely on the ravens than a drugstore marketing man to tell me when spring is on the way. This pair was billing and cooing on a high lamppost; can you imagine these big, raucous birds as a romantic couple? I would expect that the courthouse ravens are already nesting, by the way.
In our hiking days, the LH and I never tried to trace the course of local creeks down from the hills above town. As a result, Butte Creek is a bit of a mystery to me; the name certainly suggests its origin -- Thumb Butte. What I do know is that Gurley Street crosses this watercourse just before the light at Gail Gardner. The creek defines the boundaries of the shady Pine Lawn mobile home campus and the big Woodlands apartment complex. The crossing (above) at Willow Street is the next in line from Gurley! Once the creek passes under Willow, it cuts through the Prescott College Campus.
It seems to me that this driveway is a fairly new piece of construction. The culvert makes a fine frame for viewing the waterway upstream (below).
However, I was struck by the different evaluation of flood potential by the property owner above (fairly low), compared to the city (a good 3x higher), which installed three huge passages for melt water, the every-10-year 100-year flood or possible hurricane remnants.
Moving on, the low water crossing on Norris Street near Prescott College gives a picture of how high this winters' waters pushed debris.
Today, the creek is steady, fed by continuing mountain snow melt. But the flow is gentle, making wonderful patterns on the cement apron.
The course of the shallow water was parted here, detailed by flowing algae.
And here's a small discovery I made the day these pictures were taken: there is a spring slightly uphill from the concrete apron on the northeast side of Norrist. Butte Creek continues its run from here past several more Prescott College buildings, crosses under Miller Valley Road where it joins Miller Creek and then on to the big one, Granite Creek.
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