What You Will Not Find Here

You will find no advertising, no pop-ups, no tweets. Not even photographs, let alone a slide show. Nothing here will be moving fast. It will hardly be moving at all. Visit when you want a break from frenzy.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Day 14 Outdoors: Far From Home

Thursday, April 12, 2012, 9:20-10:12 a.m.
(Carefree, Arizona)

To Easterners and Midwesterners, accustomed to a verdant, intimate, embracing landscape, the desert can seem alien and forbidding—completely “other.” Cacti and succulents of necessity hoard their moisture, and nature offers little in the way of shelter, other than welcome cottonwoods along courses of water. Hot sun, dry wind, rattlesnakes, scorpions--.




But a desert garden, inside cool walls for shade and enlivened by a quiet fountain, can be welcoming indeed. Finches come to drink at the softly burbling fountain, and other birds sing in brilliantly flowering trees outside the wall. Clay tiles collect and give off warmth on a cool morning. Even the forbidding, thorny cactus plants offer bright flowers, and a soothing oasis atmosphere fills the civilized, bounded space. Here there is no hurry at all. 

5 comments:

Gerry said...

Think of it, to be a bird in the desert.

P. J. Grath said...

The towns have trees, mostly acacia and palo verde. Palms used to be planted, and so there are still palms in Phoenix and Scottsdale, but they require too much water and are no longer recommended. Birds also have lovely little blooming shrubs and vines in the towns. There was a beautiful tree in blossom outside my friend Helen's gate, a tree I remember from Florida. Its name? That I don't recall.

Helen said...

Lovely post. Makes me see things anew.

Dawn said...

Exactly...no hurry at all...that's why I love it out there...

P. J. Grath said...

Does it make you want to sit outdoors, Helen? Dawn, there's no hurry there for you and me, because when we are there we are on vacation!