Wild Life

We took a trip out to the desert this afternoon, looking for flowers and rocks and found something we didn't expect to see. A bright green iguana sunning himself on a red rock. He was a hundred feet from the car when we spotted him and from the distance, I thought maybe somebody had placed a kid's plastic toy on the rock. But no, he was alive. While I studied him with a pair of binoculars, Bill fit a telephoto lens on his camera and snapped this picture of him before he took off. His head was camouflaged browny tan but the rest of him was way off. Maybe he'd just crawled out from under a mesquite. The desert is fairly brilliantly green these days. I don't know how much longer that will continue. Already, the grasses are heading up and it looks like a nasty fire season.

The ocotillos were in bloom today too. When you get to a 'forest' of them, they look spectacular waving their orange wands in the air. So I had to get some pictures of them too. The little hedgehog cacti are still blooming magenta and pink but the prickly pear are only just beginning. We imagine in another week to ten days they will be gleaming with yellow and golden blooms.

It's fun because each week some other desert wildflower is blooming its heart out. They are all taking turns. So if you only get to make one desert wildflower trip each season, you're going to miss out. Several weeks ago, it was the blue lupine and yellow poppies covering hillsides. Then two weeks ago, it was the spreading orange blanket of mallows. This week, the light pinkish desert ceanothus and the purple fountain grass drew a spotlight. The Mariposa Lily that was so brilliant three weeks ago is almost finished as are the ruby red penstemon, but you can still find a few. So for this next month, it looks like it will be blooming cactus. I'm getting better at identifying some of the plants, but it was great having my sister come along on Sunday and tell me what they were.

We still haven't seen our first rattlesnake yet. I've been keeping my ears open for a distinctive noise. I talked to a lady on Saturday who ran into a big one three weeks ago. She said it sounded like a garden hose sizzling with water. She said it was so big, she thought its head looked like a cobra. So she and her kids and dog backed away from it. But no, we haven't seen any 'hide nor hair' of a critter. I guess we're just working our way up to it. If we do find one, I hope Bill still has his telephoto lens with him for I'm not getting up close and personal for a shot with my camera.

One of those "feelings"

We had a chance to look at a house for sale in our neighborhood last week. We certainly don't need another house. The one we've got now needs quite a bit more work, but with spring here, we've been doing more things outside, like gardening and sunning. And the yard we've got now is certainly minuscule. So that's what prompted us to look at a house with a big yard about half a block away. The yard was certainly something. You could have had patios and gazebos and even a deck with a lap pool on both sides and the end of the lot. It even had a huge two car garage. But the house itself? Incredibly tiny, and boxy and...sad.

What do I mean by sad? Well, when you entered, you were gripped by a heavy feeling of depression and hopelessness. It might have been just the dark paneled walls. Hey, I've spent thirty-five years in a wood paneled home and yes, it is depressing! But this feeling went beyond the walls. Trust me. The living room was big-gish, for an eight hundred square foot home, I'd guess it was maybe twelve by twenty feet. A hallway divided the house in half, with a small bedroom on either side. Then it entered into a long kitchen at the back of the house with a smallish bathroom located off the kitchen. That was it. Yes, it was built back in the twenties, when one wasn't expected to have so much room to do one's living in. So it certainly wasn't just the dinkiness that caused the sadness, was it?

It was more. Evidence lay in the hallway and the bathroom indicated a person with disabilities had dwelt here, by the hand holds and wide doorways. Yes, the real estate agent said, the widow who lived here was confined to a wheelchair. I got the feeling that there had been a husband but he'd been gone for several years, ten years to be exact. I asked if that were so. It appeared I was.

We stepped outside and continued looking and the oppressive feeling subsided. Yes, the lot was certainly big enough. Yes, you could really fix up the yard and have a humdinger party up here. But, oh yes, you still had to get past the unbearable sadness in that house. Oh my! After looking around, we took our leave and went back to our house. I sat down and started thinking about that house and promptly burst into tears. "We can't buy it!" I told Bill, wiping my eyes and blowing my nose. "It's just too sad a place."

We called the agent and told her we'd changed our minds. She asked why and I told her how sad it made me feel. She agreed. (I was surprised by this.) She said when she'd entered the house to open it up for us, she too, had burst into tears. The lady with the disability had to enter a rest home and the house was to be sold for her care in the rest home. That was certainly depressing news.

But the next day, I got a feeling. I wasn't meditating exactly, but I might as well have been. The husband was protecting the house. He's been gone for ten years, sure. But he's been right there protecting his investment and keeping watch over his wife in all that time. He thought his house would take care of her until she passed and came on to join him. But it wasn't enough. And he's grown incessantly sadder watching her grow weaker and sicker until she had to enter a rest home. Now his precious home, that he and his wife had lived in since the mid-Forties is up for sale. It just shouldn't be happening and the sadness he feels has permeated the house.

I hope the house sells soon so that the lady's medical expenses can be paid for. I hope the people who buy it aren't super sensitive to the feeling coming from the house. I hope the lady gets to join her husband soon and this pervasive sadness will lighten up. But for now, we're going to concentrate on getting our own small yard in order and not go searching out other troubled stories in our neighborhood.

Questionable Strategy

I attended a long town council meeting last night. It was so long that I ended up going home before it was completely over and regret that... in that, now I might not know ALL that ended up happening. But the two and a half hours I attended, I learned a lot! I'll write more about the meat and potatoes issues that were discussed in a future blog, but for now, I just have to (rant) over an incident that happened.



A group of extremely dedicated women had their agenda come up for a hearing. These ladies are trying to get a new humane animal shelter built in Superior. (I mentioned the current one in a blog about two months ago: "The Subject is Dogs" February 18). Normally, an agenda item takes about ten to fifteen minutes for the presenter to present AND the council to confer. In this particular one, the ladies brought some Gung-Ho groups out of the Valley (Phoenix, meaning: money) to do the presenting. What they were asking the council for was about five acres of land to build a new state of the art facility for the animals. The animal rights lady spoke for thirty-five minutes and then wanted a second lady to make her points, but the mayor said he was sorry, her time was up (and besides the crowd was getting restive after hearing the same points hammered three or more times). So the ladies, in a bunch, got up and trooped out, leaving the rest of us tired and wondering when we'd get to hear our agenda items.



The ladies were making good points about which they spoke. Yes, there's a crying need for a more humane, bigger facility for abandoned animals in this town. Yes, it's far better to try and place unwanted animals and get them spayed and neutered and returned to good loving homes. But it was their tactics that left me cold! At the end of the presentation, before the ladies even knew if they had swayed the councilmen or the mayor in getting their five acres of land, they threatened the town! The threat was that they would expose to the state the poor underequipped (malfunctioning) animal facility the town already has. That IF the town allowed them to have the land they need to build their new building, then they'd hush up the current situation and "get on with it". But if the town ignored their requests, they were going to raise a ruckus and boy, would the town would be sorry!



Goodness me, Ladies, but your tactics are harsh. If it was me asking for something from the town, I think I'd be as pleasant as possible when I asked for something. Then, if I got stalled or derailed, I'd get a bit critical and haul out my "You'll be sorry!" scenario. You aren't going to get what you ask for by this method. I'd say eighty per cent of the councilmembers (maybe more) were deciding to ignore your request a) because of the length of your presentation and b) because you were using implied threats against the town.



If I were God of this town (or had any say in the matter, which I don't) I do have a solution however. The animal group needs land. A small industrial group wants to settle in Superior and build a facility that would use roughly three acres of land. The City of Superior has a block of industrial land (Lot 3) for sale that is nine acres in size. The small industrial group has made a bid on the property that most of the council members were privately sneering at since the bid was so low. But the Win here would be that the small industrial outfit would be hiring up to thirty mostly unskilled workers and training them at a rate of $15. to $30. per hour (and that's nothing to sneer at!). So my solution would be this: The town subdivides the nine acre parcel and sells three acres to the small industrial part to the new plant that will be built and hires thirty nonskilled people. Then they give the remaining six acres to the animal people for a new facility that would bring good Ju-Ju to the town for being so humane and state of the art. The town looks good from both an economical and humane point of view. What's not to like about this scenario?



But that's just my opinion.

Scaredy Cat

I am by no means, a cat psychologist, but the strangest thing happened this past week. Spooky is a part Siamese cat Bill found hiding in a wood pile when she was a wee kitten nearly twelve years ago. She is a devoted pet to me, but when others are around, she is scarce. She hides under a chair or sofa when family members come to call and only dashes out and streaks for the bedroom if somebody frightens her out. She's been this way since birth. Willy jokes that I don't really have a second cat, since he's only seen the back end of her running down the hallway. Very occasionally, she will allow Charlie or Sage to pet her, but it is usually only when she is half awake from a nap and they have moved very slowly.

When we first moved here to Arizona, she spent the best part of the first month living in the guest bedroom. Indeed, the first week we were here, she spent it wedged up inside a small cupboard with a false bottom. The Hidier the Better in Spooky's world. Since DeLores was arriving for a week's visit, I wanted to vacate the bedroom of the cats for her. So two weeks ago, I 'evicted' the cats from the guest room and tried to make the sun room more welcoming. It worked pretty well. Spook settled in to a small red velour cat house on the floor, with an opening small enough that Chuy doesn't stick his nose into. The rest of the time she spends sleeping under the recliner loveseat in the front room. So... I thought... I hoped things would be 'okay' when DeLores arrived.

I wasn't convinced that it would be so. I half worried that just having somebody else in the house would destroy any of the peace Spooky was showing lately. A few days before she arrived, I even got Spook to join Kickers in a Deck Outing. On the deck, we've got two big wire dog carriers we've rigged up with perches so we can take the parrots out for sunning. One of the carriers is so large, we've even got a separator in them. The birds are having a good time communing with the wild birds and Bill has set it up with a fan that blows a cool mist on them when it gets too hot. (Wind and fog are something we were never at a lack for in Dillon Beach, but hmmmm... in Arizona, it's rather nice to be cooled with a misty fog.) But Kickers decided several weeks ago that one of the parrot's cages on the deck was a dandy place to view the wild birds that flocked nearby and she goes out for hours at a time, perfectly happy. So last week, I got Spook to join her. At first, she was definitely apprehensive, but by the second time, she seemed to settle down and like it.

Maybe it was the open wire carrier on the deck that 'opened' Spook up to new conditions that did it. Maybe it was just that since she's going to be twelve years old this summer, she's decided that she can change. Whatever... she did it. By the end of the second day, she was letting DeLores lure her and allowed DeLores to stroke her. She wouldn't flee the room when DeLores entered it. She even rolled in the sunshine and regarded DeLores as another 'Mama'. She has let my friend Pam stroke her, but this was when we'd been gone for vacation for several weeks and Pam had to spend a lot of time getting the cat to let her get near her. Spooky seemed to be all in favor of having DeLores as our guest and while she didn't gush over her as Kickers did, she kept coming out and letting DeLores pet her each day. We were plain amazed!

One of the aspects DeLores and I have in common are that DeLores has two partial Siamese cats too that I have yet to see! They do not like company or anybody strange in their home and though she tells me she has those two, I've never seen them! So maybe there is a special Siamese mysterious about DeLores and I that these sorts of cats like. DeLores' cats are only four years old, so I told her she might have to wait eight more years before her cats come out for company. And maybe, Spooky won't do this again for the next person who visits. But personally, I think the move to Arizona has 'loosened' her up and by the time I get her back to Dillon Beach this summer, she'll be such a well traveled cat, she'll welcome anything that comes her way.

Well.... I can hope so, can't I?

Wildflower Friday

We got out to the desert yesterday afternoon to make our acquaintance with the riotous blooming wildflowers. Some of the flowers are about spent while others, like the cactus flowers, are only beginning. This one to the left that looks like a poppy on steriods is actually a Desert Mariposa Lily. You can't see it that well from the picture but the middle is a vibrant purple and the color is clear bright orange. The tangerine/orange of the mallow are what was really overwhelming in the mountain pictures. The little blue one halfway up is called a Blue Dick, (why? I do not know!), and the bright pink one is some mountain Penstemon we found growing along a stream bank.

My friend DeLores is here visiting for a few days and the trip into the desert was fun to take to show her what we've found. We combined it with a (futile) attempt to find the old Silver King Cemetary situated near the old Silver King Mine (which we found) and the remains, if any, of the ghost town of Silver King. We didn't find that either. But we were in the right 'neck of the woods', so we'll try it again some day.

Later, yesterday, the wind blew hard from the east, and continued that way all night. It was still howling this morning and we changed our plans for riding the Harleys and drove to a hot rod show in Globe instead. The old cars were pretty hot and it is amazing to me the number of people who spend inordinate loving hours restoring or rebuilding these gorgeous old cars. There was also a road rally of Shelbys, so Highway 60 was alive with metallic bundles of car dollars today. A good day just to play Looky-Loo! So whether it was hot flowers or hot cars, we've seen plenty in the past few days. And maybe the wind will lay low and we can be Harley folks tomorrow.

Birthday Mama

Today is my oldest son's, Willy, birthday. He's a whopping 38 years old. It feels hard to believe that thirty eight years ago I became a mama for the first time. Sometimes, that day feels like it was only yesterday, I can remember nearly the whole day. At other times, it seems so far away, it might have happened in another time, long, long ago. So Happy Birthday, Willy, for your thirty-eight great years on God's green earth.

We used to have a friend, who would congratulate me each time Willy had a birthday, since he said, it was the mother who was really having a 'birth' day. And each time he said that, it would conjure up the whole brand new motherhood thing for me again.

Poor Willy, being the First, he didn't get the best mother in the world. Sometimes, I doubted whether I was even fit to be a mother. It was 1970, and at twenty, I decided I could do it all. I'd be a mother, but I'd also be working our resort business and doggone it, since there was no commute and no childcare, why couldn't I do it all? So I did, but I don't believe I did any one of those things all that well. He was a child who cried a lot and the consensus of the day was to let the baby cry himself to sleep. I spent a LOT of time listening to that poor kid cry himself to sleep. But you know what I heard on the nightly news last night? On the eve of my thirty-eighth year of becoming a mother? That "experts" now believe it is better for the baby's mental and physical health to let them go to sleep on their own naturally. If that means letting them cry it out, then that's better. It's better to put poor baby down and let him sob to sleep than it is to spend hours rocking him. That last bit about rocking him, really hit me. I can't tell you how many times I've sat with other mothers who expounded on the many hours spent rocking their babies to sleep and I felt mute with dismay because I hadn't rocked my own boys. There wasn't time. So while a little feller cried himself to sleep, I'd spend my time making dinner or cleaning up. (Willy, for your information, I wasn't having a lot of fun myself while you were crying yourself to sleep!) But I did do it anyway. The baby sleep experts they quoted on last night news, said that the babies who went to sleep on their own, without all the rocking and fussing by the mother or being put into the parents' bed were children whose sleep habits were more natural and sound and (get this next one...) also grew up to be adults who did not have weight problems. Now... that bit really surprised me!

So, Happy Birthday, Willy. You've grown into a fine man who doesn't suffer from sleep deprivation (unless you have to get up with your own little sons) and you don't have a weight problem. I'm proud that I was a mother so far ahead of her time that I was thinking of your middle aged health when I let you go to sleep fussing and crying. But also, goodness me! Aren't I too young to be a mother of a thirty-eight year old?

Mattie's Grave

We've been searching for Mattie's grave off and on for the past year or more. And today, with a modicum of Good Luck, we were able to find it. The desert grave of Mattie Blaylock Earp, the second 'wife', (common law, that is) of Wyatt Earp, famed Western gun fighter/law man depending on who you talk to. She died in the little mining town of Pinal City, Arizona on July 3, 1888 and is buried in the Pinal City Cemetery.

The cemetery is a hard place to find. It's been looted a number of times so the location is written about and passed along by mouth, but even so, one expanse of Sonoran Desert looks suspiciously like another and even when you think you've found the right rutted patch of road to follow to the grave sites, you're never quite sure. Bill and I thought we'd found the 'right place' on a trek we took on Valentine's Day, but never discovered the graves. Turns out we were only maybe a quarter mile or less away from them, but until this afternoon, we hadn't found it.

We participated in a town clean up today. About forty active participants took part in driving their trucks and utility trailers around town picking up trash and yard clippings and old household items people couldn't get to the dump on their own. The dump stayed open for five hours, taking all the stuff we hauled in for free. It was a LOT of work and we filled eight drive off dumpsters in that time. Bill and I hauled six loads with our trailer, manhandling old harvest gold sofas and chairs from the Seventies, rolls of carpet, piles and piles of prickling mesquite and other thorny waste and many, many tires to the dump. When we finished, they gave us participants a picnic and the mayor cooked us hotdogs. And then we got to talk to some of the townspeople who "know things".

We started telling one couple how we'd finally found the old silver mining town of Pinal City, out by the Arboretum. They said they hadn't been able to locate it, but had we ever found Mattie's Grave. We laughed and said, no, we'd been searching for it off and on since last year. We described a peak we thought it was on, just east of the Arboretum. The couple said no, that wasn't it, and proceeded to tell us where it was located. Now, I'm sorry but I'm not going to repeat it for I guess this pioneer cemetery has been looted enough, so you're going to have to search this out on your own. Turns out when we tried the second time this past February we were very close to finding it. We just didn't get quite close enough.

The town story is that since looters had disturbed Mattie's original grave, townsfolk had dug her up and deposited her elsewhere, in a quiet undisclosed location. But they've made a fine effort of decorating up the grave that's still in the Pinal City Cemetary. There's a nice wrought iron cross with "BLAYLOCK" written out on it and a wooden post with a mounted picture of Mattie and a sweet poem, testifying to her hard life and addiction to laudanum before she died in her mid-Thirties. And if you look real close, you'll see what Bill and I were excited about when we viewed the picture on the computer this evening. Not orbs, exactly, but a ray of light emanating down from Mattie's picture over the poem. If that's not a Sign that she's pleased we found her, I don't what is.

There's other graves there too and I have yet to look over the other pictures I took up there. But if any more spirits show up in them, I'll post some more here. For now, here's Mattie's resting place and I'm pleased to have found it. It's like: Bill and I are beginning to think Superior is welcoming us aboard by slowly letting us have access to some of its long held secrets.