Month: July 2017

Tohono Chol (“desert corner”) is a desert botanical garden and nature preserve in Tucson.  It contains various gardens, nature/walking paths, an exhibit house, cafe, and museum shop.  We spent a lovely couple of hours there on Friday and enjoyed the natural surroundings (both flora and fauna) as well as the art work — both inside in the Exhibit house as well as outside along the paths.  This is the park for which we were able to obtain 2 free passes from the Tucson public library.

There were great paths to the various gardens as well as walking trails for desert views or to provide information on desert plants. 

 

 Along the paths we saw roadrunners, lizards, jackrabbits, rest areas, relevant quotes, and metal artwork.

 

 

The land for the park was donated by a private couple.  One of the original homes on the property is now used as an exhibit house to showcase the Native American pottery and basketry collection of the former owners as well as some temporary exhibitions by local artists. The former living area housed an abstract art exhibition.  Finally, the highligh of the day came from the museum shop (actually just outside), and we didn’t have to buy them.  Take a look at a couple of young owls who have taken up residency on the window sills of the shop.  The sales clerk pointed them out to us.



Bob and I have moved on down the road from Phoenix to Tucson.  Bob actually started this house sit solo while I was finishing the one in Phoenix.  We are back together again, however, and enjoying caring for two Australian Cattle dogs in a lovely home in the historic West University neighborhood of Tucson.  

Raina is 11 years old.  She is pretty laid back and very sweet. She also seems to collect the Arizona dust so reminds us a bit of Linus from the Snoopy cartoon.  Dot is an energetic 3 year old who loves her walks and playing with toys.  Both are very well behaved, and we generally only hear them bark if there is a stranger at the door.  They are good protectors!

Our current abode is about a quarter mile from the University of Arizona, a couple of blocks from the vibrant 4th Avenue District, and about a 15 minute walk to the downtown area.  We have walked around a bit already in each of these areas. At the downtown library, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the library cards that we got for Pima County while in Green Valley last year are still active.  This allowed us to get 2 free admission passes to a botanical park (see Tohono Chol post) as well as check out a couple of travel planning books.  We do love our libraries!

We spent a good bit of time on Thursday checking out a number of the (mostly) free museums on the U of A campus — everything from sports to poetry to photography to art.

 

The Poetry Center was founded in 1960 and has nearly 70,000 items related to poetry.  It holds a reading and lecture series, classes and workshops, a book club, and family days.  It is basically a library dedicated to poetry, but it had some fun posters to look at, a jigsaw puzzle you could sit and work on, and a special exhibit on single-issue books.

The University Museum of Art had some fun exhibitions.  we really enjoyed one on some Bisbee artists since we had visited and really enjoyed that town during our stay here last year.



It has been a relatively short housesit in Phoenix but not too short to not be charmed by the sweet Riker, a 2-year old Great Dane mix.  We do our walks early and late in the day to avoid the serious heat, but we had a couple of short ball throw sessions at about 10 am to let him get out a bit more.

We have continued to explore the greater downtown Phoenix area.  

The state of Arizona is relatively young having joined the nation as the 48th state in 1912.  It is the 6th largest state in land mass and the 14th in population.  Phoenix is the capital.  The State Capitol building and grounds lie outside of the main downtown area but are still walkable.

While all of these memorials were impressive and deservedly honored those serving our country in battle, it made me a bit depressed that we humans can’t seem to find a way to get along with each other.  So, I was glad to come across the statue below as at least a change from the other memorials.  The Release the Fear Sculpture below is made out of melted weapons and was created by Robert John Miley.  The sidewalk beneath the sculpture has various peace-based quotes from famous people.  My favorite is by Mother Teresa — “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”



Bob and I officially began our downtown Phoenix house sit on Thursday morning after a transition meeting and dinner with the homeowners on Wednesday night.  We are house sitting for newlyweds (married just last month!) who are in Wisconsin (grand old badger state!) for a family reunion.  The have a sweet 2-year old Great Dane mix rescue dog named Riker.  He likes his raw egg in the morning (served with his other food but he’s most excited about the egg), people, and walks/toys, etc.  He is a charmer.

Although the temperature has remained around 110, and likely will for awhile, we have done a bit of exploring of the downtown area and went to an afternoon Diamondbacks game on Thursday.  Bob was even able to meet up briefly with a college baseball buddy.