Last week!

I mean this IS the last week, though the pictures are from last week (as in the week past ... you know what I mean!).

We had a wonderful turn of events last week. Cacti we had been watching at the entrance to the Mayo Clinic hospital in Phoenix were getting readier and readier to bloom. So, we headed out a little early for the radiation one morning ... and there they were! A variety of cereus, I think, all in glorious bloom (second pic from bottom) ... and wilting by midday and gone the next day. What a thrill to see these beautiful, complex blooms!

Another day, when it was a little cooler, we went down to the Desert Botanical Gardens and had another wonderful day. The bee at the bottom is doing his pollinator business in a prickly pear blossom.

Sandy is holding up well (four more zaps to go) but it was good that it was a cool day. So much to see!

The naturalists of the breakfast table are now watching the blooms open on the cholla behind the house AND the curve-billed thrashers nesting in that cholla. We've watched them build the nest and now they're alternating sitting on the three eggs in the nest. Can't tell him from her, so this is "it."

Our weekends home between Phoenix stays always seem short, but this time we added some items. Saturday we helped at the Fort Bayard Open House in the afternoon; I liked the image of the lady walking the parade ground. That night, since the Rapture didn't occur, we went to the Seedboat Gallery, which has an outdoor enclosed courtyard, and listened to Gary Emerson's illustrated talk on "Our Magnificent Universe." And it WAS magnificent in terms of heavenly pictures, with the heavens above us, live music and artworks all around us. BUT, programs that start at 9 p.m. are a little late for us old folks ... we're still feeling it!

And in addition to the thrashers and the ants and the bees in and around the lovely cholla, deer come to drink next to it. And the mini-crocodile scampers away from it and onto the house!

Today we took the high road to Phoenix, through Mule Creek and Clifton and Safford and Globe. Just before we turned off on 70, out beyond Buckhorn, Sandy espied a herd of javelinas right beside the road. We did a quick u-turn and got to watch them run up a draw, where they crossed under the highway in a culvert and went on over the hill. TV