A tale of 12 apricots

My mother came of age in southern California. Little wonder, then, that fruit was a major part of my diet growing up. I recall that when we traveled from Phoenix to Riverside to visit grandparents, come Beaumont and Banning, we would stop at a roadside stand to buy a lug or two of fresh-picked fruit. In more recent times, I've had to depend upon the supermarkets. Peaches and nectarines they serve up reasonably well (though I truly prefer scrawny Georgia or Michigan peaches to the over-bred California product.) However, I don't believe I have ever purchased a supermarket apricot (one of my absolute favorites) that had any flavor to speak of. Frustrating. Disappointing. But: good news ahead.

Examine this picture carefully. You will find six fruit hanging from the branches. Apricots. Which is most remarkable. When we moved into this house over 20 years ago, I planted the seeds from every apricot that I ate; today, there are five or six trees that range in size from a 2-foot runtlet to a tall 20-foot specimen. All are approximately the same age. Over the years, I have enjoyed all of three (3) apricots. Oh, yes, the trees bloom profusely in spring and the leaves provide a lovely golden glow in the autumn. But a crop? Almost always, zilch. Nada. While Prescott's climate is great for stone fruit, we are prone to late frosts. Or, as happened this year, we suffered high winds that battered the trees shortly after they flowered.

And yet there I am unexpectedly with a total of 12 fruit on one of the smaller of my trees. Perhaps because this particular tree is sheltered behind a much larger fellow; perhaps because it may have received more watering than usual. Whatever. Now to make sure that I can enjoy my apricots. And so I spent less than a dollar over at the WalMart to buy netting to protect my potential harvest from the birds.

Today I wrapped the individual fruit in little bundles of netting. BTW, nobody ever told me that apricot trees had thorns -- big, nasty thorns (above). To give you an idea of the small size of the bearing tree, that stick to the right is its trunk.

From a distance, the netting looks like the work of tent caterpillars. I don't care; I can hardly wait for my 12 apricots to ripen.

Summertime and the living....

See Max, all stretched out, in part to rest, in part to cool off? That's me, also. It's been hot for a week, with no respite except at night (the saving grace of high elevations, where the temps drop a good 30-40 degrees once the sun is well past the horizon.)

But some things don't mind the heat. In fact, almost everything in my potted garden is quite happy as long as the water keeps coming. I thought that pictures of my new old-fashioned bleeding heart might interest you while I go do the finishing touches to get the house ready for the arrival tomorrow of Sson, DIL, two grandchildren and, of course, the Guest Cat.

Speaking of which, there was a quite amazing cat scene this morning down the road a piece. Unseen, two cats were going at it, fang, nail and MROW!!! A ball of cat suddenly rolled down from a neighbor's garden and remained quite still for a couple of minutes, suddenly erupting into two MROWing, fighting cats. Next thing you know, one blue jay shows up, starts shouting at the cats and then his entire local tribe arrives, also shouting. At which point, the cats got the hint and moved their battle elsewhere.

Water towers here & there

Sometimes one looms just above the trees, like a cruising UFO scouting for a likely landing spot.

At other times, they're quite out in the open. But what I was quite aware of while driving the Memphis environs with my nieces was the ubiquity of water towers. Here, there and yonder. Often with the name of the particular suburban municipality (or other owner).

What's that all about, I asked my hosts, displaying my ignorance. Why all the water towers? Answer, of course, is for the same reason we have those tanks you don't really notice here in Prescott. To store water. And store it high up, giving the system a good head. Doh.

Up here in the mountains, we simply don't need all those girders and that steel. A good substantial hilltop will do quite nicely, thank you. Nor do we have to paint them a screaming white for visibility from aircraft. The tank I depend upon is pictured above. It's the Indian Hill facility that the city wants to expand, a project that has some neighbors up in arms. Unsightly, they say. (They should look at those Tennessee municipal tanks up on stilts!) Actually, friend Patty and I had to circle the tank quite carefully to find a spot or two where I could get a good shot. Furthermore, she had never even been aware of the tank's existence, though she drives the area regularly.

Here's another local tank picture I found among my archives. Again, the tank, on a hill just east of the Frontier Village shopping center, doesn't impinge on the eye nearly as much as that gouge in the mountainside at right. Perhaps it's the bluegray color, matching the chaparral, because the big white tank (below) on the ridgeline among all those houses is very, very evident. No doubt there are other water tanks around town, hidden in plain sight.

Linkage: the recent pelican post prompted Lucy to locate her photos from a trip to Australia, which she has posted at Box Elder. Wow, such elegant birds! Quite unlike the drab brown fellows that I photographed down in Louisiana. On the subject of birds, World Photos recently offered a look at a nesting stork and her young. Another subject: I tend to avoid Causes like the plague; however, if I were going to take up a cause, guerrilla gardening is a likely candidate.

Part of a HUGE sundog or ???

Very strange rainbow I caught at 11 a.m. in the eastern sky, about 45 degrees above the horizon. No clouds to the west so I couldn't check to see if it was part of a really, really huge sundog. If not that, I don't know WTH. Any knowhow out there?

A wonderful bird....

...is the pelican
His bill can hold more than his belican,
He can take in his beak,
Food enough for a week,
But I’m damned if I see how the helican."

And, believe it or not, I just discovered convergence in this dang limerick. Seems the author is not Ogden Nash but one Dixon L. Merritt, who was once editor of the Nashville Tennessean, thus linking the other leg of my recent sojourn into the matter of pelicans. But first may I state that I was terribly pleased to get not one but two reasonably usable shots of these big birds down in Cajun country, starting with the photo that leads into this post. The plaster critter above is from the Atchafalaya Basin visitor center as are the more serious sculpts below, which better show the pouches under the birds' beaks which can hold as much as three gallons of water.

It may have been in Abbeville where the Sson and I found this antique (above), suggesting that sometimes ... a colorful bird is the pelican ... even when his famous beak was made from clipper blades. The dada-esque bird below is a representation of the mascot of Louisiana State University/Lafayette, which sat in the hallway outside the room housing Ragin'Bot.

As a further note about the amazing pelican -- there was quite the press kerfluffle in the UK when a pelican in a park reached over, scooped up a pigeon in its bill and swallowed the bird whole. As luck would have it, a freshly minted videographer was also on the scene; carnage here (do not open unless you have a strong stomach!)

The several routes of SR69

Standing in the Best Buy parking lot, looking to the northwest, one gets a good picture of three different versions of SR69, the highway that links Prescott to Phoenix and points south ... to Flagstaff and points north (as well as east and west). When we first arrived in these parts, the highway that we knew was the abandoned road of the great gash in the hillside that's very visible in all these pictures. I believe that the current roadbed consists largely of a widening and straightening of the route, which had previously been leveled. If you look carefully, you will see a road line higher on the hill, one which follows the contours instead of fighting them. That much older road disappears into the hillside scraped by Lowe's (below), which is too bad -- I've always had a hankering to walk it.

This view shows a couple of tight curves in the old road. Of course, when I was young, the preferred route to Prescott was what was then US 89, the famous Mexico to Canada highway. Yes, it was all curves as it passed between the Bradshaws and Prietas, but it was paved. You couldn't say that for the Black Canyon Highway, the eastern route, of which this road section is a small part. I recall hearing the grown-ups talk about the dangers of the Black Canyon road, which they wouldn't dream of driving. How the world has changed in my lifetime!!

At last: Elvis

I'm sure that every one of you out there has been waiting breathlessly for this post. After all, how could one visit Memphis without paying respects to The King. I should have posted sooner, but spent too much time trying to locate a photo of me and the Memphis sister-in-law (we're divorced) at Graceland 10 years ago. It has disappeared down the same rabbit hole as the picture of me with a Chinese lion in Beijing. Bother!

The Famous Niece from Memphis and I cruised the city to collect assorted Elvis mementos. Item: Sun Studios (above), where he cut his famous records. Elvis is a 2-plaque tourist attraction. Plaque #1 below; #2 is at Graceland. Who knows -- there might be a third and a fourth somewhere else. There is a statue of Elvis that I missed; it's at the Memphis visitors center.

Nearby is an empty building advertising one of his hits. No data on whether or not this structure actually was a down-at-the-heels hotel at one time.

The drive was long from the studio to Elvis prime; signs that we are arriving in the neighborhood above and below. The Estate/Amusement Park apparently does operate its own Heartbreak Hotel.

The Sign tells us we've arrived. Barely visible in the background is Elvis' private jet.

The gates (above) and the mansion (below). No, I didn't tour the buildings and grounds this visit. Once 10 years ago was enough time to dedicate to the essential tackiness of show biz glitz!

Ah -- here is plaque #2.

However, the dedication of the fans over the years is, to me, remarkable. Inscriptions cover the fence at the front of the property -- and part of the sidewalk, too. New messages take the place of those that have weathered over the years.

In one of her incarnations, my SIL (WD) was publisher of the weekly newspaper in Tupelo, where the rock & roll star was born. She gave me this copy of a special edition (complete with a report of a civic meeting attended by Klansmen in robes -- not mentioned in the daily) as a memento of my recent visit.

Plus a set of two Elvis T-shirts. How can I repay such thoughtfulness. Perhaps I'll gift her a Whiskey Row T-shirt of her very own or, even better, a selection from my stock of genuine Arizona scorpion paper weights.

Monsoon revisionism

We've been subject to a certain amount of hoorah having to do with the coming of the North American Monsoon (that's the official title, BTW). Seems the federal weather folk have revised their definition. For many years it had been an arcane formula involving the dew point in Phoenix -- obviously a Valley-centric arrangement, especially for people in, like, Flagstaff, Sonora, Tucson or, for that matter, Prescott. Now NOAA has picked an arbitrary pair of dates (June 15 through September 30) as the new definition; this, of course, completely overlooks Mexico, where the rains have already started. My own inclination is to vote for an explanation that involves physics, as being a lot more meaningful. In the meantime, I have to hand it to the meteorologists -- today, June 16, saw the appearance of a puff over the hills about 8:30 a.m. which grew into a clouded sky by about noon. That, to me, is the sign that the rains are on their way. And that the beastly heat we've had recently will finally break. Usually around July 4 or thereabouts.

Through the tunnel of clean

Readers won't believe what a blighted life I have led ... the opportunities missed ... the educational events neglected ... the everyday experiences bypassed. So it should come as no surprise that I had never been through an automatic car wash. Until last Thursday.

But there I was, in a friend's pick-up, staring ahead at the blue octopus arms and the bristles hiding at the rear.

Reading the many instructions.

Whoosh. A preliminary swipe of soap across the windshield. By a human, no less.

About to enter the realm of the blue octopus.

Into the maw.

Finally the big brushes at the sides get into the act.

A final rinse ...

And a big sign that says thank you for our business. And one less experience that I have missed in my long life.