Gardens of Arizona

Last Thursday my manager, his manager, and I took a whirlwind trip to the other gardens in Arizona. We visited the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Tohono Chul State Park and the Arizona Sonoran Wildlife Museum in Tucson, and ended with a visit to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior. It was nice to get out of a the- snowy Flagstaff (9 degrees when we left) and to head to the desert.

We visited with employees at each stop to take a look behind the scenes and to see how each garden is organized. I was mostly interested in seeing their plant collections and their interpretive panels. I've enjoyed my interpretive work at The Arb and I'm considering making it a career (I'm also considering being a plant taxonomist, a writer, or something else). I'm glad I had the chance to see these gardens before leaving Arizona. The job ends in mid-February and I'll be moving on.

These are all pictures from the wild. The gardens were beautiful, but so were the landscapes around them.

The plant above is a desert spoon from Coronado National park. I took this picture at one of our campsites very early in the morning.

Other highlights of the trip included seeing my first peccary (also called a javelina), my first wild tarantula, and landscapes full of saguaros.




















P.S. Writing. Between Thanksgiving and this trip, I slacked off. I couldn't help thinking about the characters even on days I didn't write, so that, however, is a good sign. I'm back to an half hour each day.