Quilts at Tucson Botanical Gardens

Benefits Quilt for a Cause and TBC

Last week, when I visited Tucson Botanical Gardens (TBG), I expected to see lots of beautiful plants and trees. What I did not expect to see was quilts. Had I planned my visit instead of just popping in on a whim, I would have realized there was a special exhibit featuring quilts created for Quilt for a Cause. Apparently, this is a regular fundraiser wherein a variety of handmade quilts crafted by local quilters are available for purchase with the proceeds going to support Quilt for a Cause and the TBG.

I was delighted to see such a wide variety of beautiful quilts on display and for sale at what I felt were very reasonable prices.

Look at those gorgeous colors.

 

Some of the quilt backs were just as beautiful as the quilt tops.

 

The backing on this one has a Native American theme.

 

I am not a huge fan of this quilt top, but I love, love, love the backing material as shown in the next image.

 

The fabric backing for the above quilt features what appear to be heirloom hydrangea flowers.

 

I know the square used in this quilt is called a Churn Dash.

 

The backing fabric for the Churn Dash quilt is beautiful irises in colors complementing the quilt top perfectly.

The above images were all captured in the space where the main exhibit was housed. As I was leaving the gardens, I noticed another room that housed racks of quilts for sale.

This is a smaller, quilted wall-hanging.

The quilt featured below — a table runner —  was, in my opinion, both pretty and unique, so I decided to capture it for sharing here.

Table runner featuring hand-embroidered quilt squares.

 

The quilt was actually a dual-purpose piece that had what I believe is a hanging sleeve attached to the back so the quilt can also be used as a wall hanging.

 

I really enjoyed the cute little flower embellishments added to the back.

I enjoyed the exhibit so much, I think I’ll be returning multiple times to see if other quilts from the for-sale racks are rotated into the exhibit. While folks are free to look through the for-sale racks, it’s hard to appreciate the beauty of each quilt when looking at the piece while folded up and hanging on a crowded rack.

There’s one more very cool item I want to share, but that’s reserved for my next post.

As Seen at Tucson Botanical Gardens

Last week, as mentioned in my previous post, I visited Tucson Botanical Gardens (TBG). Below are a bunch of images I captured while strolling through. TBG really is a great place to beat the heat. Temperatures were around 95 degrees Fahrenheit (~35 C), but with the low humidity and abundant shade at TBG, the heat was tolerable.

The first few pics are from the Nuestro Jardin (Barrio Garden). Per the TBG website, Nuestro Jardin honors Tucson’s traditional Mexican-American neighborhood gardens with a charming and colorful display of flowers, trees, herbs, and objects commonly seen in barrio gardens.” A barrio is a Spanish-speaking neighborhood in a city or town in the US, especially in the Southwest.

This is the exit from the Barrio Garden.

 

There’s definitely an eclectic collection of objects in the Barrio Garden.

 

It’s amazing to see all the different items that were not intended to hold plants that can be used as planters.

 

If you look closely, you can see that a small piece of the bicycle frame has been cut open and now holds a collection of succulent plants.

There are also various artworks scattered throughout TBG’s grounds.

Stained glass screen.

 

Beautiful bronze sculpture that’s about 15 feet (~5 meters) tall. It looks like a cornucopia to me, but I’m not sure if that’s what it was intended to be.

 

There’s also an amazing array of trees at TBG, including fruit trees, which grow well here in Tucson.

 

Can you see the oranges?

 

Another shot to show the variety of trees.

 

There are so many interesting pots, planters, trellises, etc. scattered throughout the grounds, too. I really like the triangular trellis.

 

I also like the way those grapevines are hung along the wall on a trellis that resembles the pattern on a chain-link fence. The pattern was more obvious in person.

 

Pretty pot overflowing with sweet potato vine.

 

More pots full of annuals.

 

A cozy resting place in the Herb Garden.

 

Colorful details.

 

Tranquil shady spot.

 

Me and a bee!

 

Bronze sculpture of a bird’s nest. You can’t tell by looking at the picture that the art piece is about 6 feet tall.

Finally, what looks to me like a messy palm tree. I see lots of these around town and have often wondered why people don’t trim the wilted fronds from below the top, green fronds. It would certainly look nicer, in my opinion. As it turns out, that’s a great spot for bats to roost at night and there are lots of bats here in Tucson.

Palm tree with wilted fronds that serve as a great bat roost.

In my next post, I’ll shares pictures of some of the quilts that were on display at TBG.

Flowers at Tucson Botanical Gardens

On Tuesday, I met up with a friend to go for a walk. We had to go pretty early in the day since, now that June is here, temperatures are typically in the mid- to upper-90s, and may even creep into the triple digits. Fortunately, the humidity is low. It still feels quite hot, though. In general, it’s recommended that any walking/hiking done as a leisure pursuit should be done early enough that one finishes no later than 10:00 a.m.

I’ve never really been a morning person, but I’m determined to get out more this year than I did last year. As it turns out, I like hiking through the desert. On Tuesday, I met my friend at 7:30 and we were finished walking by around 9:30. That meant I still had a full day left to fill. I didn’t really feel like sitting around the house, so I decided to visit Tucson Botanical Gardens (TBG). I’d heard that it is a great place to beat the Tucson heat. (We bought a membership late last year and have only visited a few times.)

TBC is located on a 5.5 acre property in midtown Tucson. The Porter family, who originally owned the property, experimented over many years to learn what would thrive in their commercial nursery and private garden. After the nursery closed and Mr. Porter died, the family hoped their garden would still be of use. Through an agreement between Mrs. Porter and the city, Tucson Botanical Gardens was invited to set up headquarters on the property in 1974.

Now, almost 40 years later, TBG really is a delightful space to wander through on a hot late-Spring day.  There are 17 themed gardens providing plenty of shade. With benches and chairs scattered throughout the property, there are numerous quiet little tranquil nooks that make for peaceful spots to sit and relax, meditate, read, nap, whatever.

There were a lot more flowers in bloom than I expected. A couple nice exhibits were happening, too, including a collection of quilts. I took quite a few pictures, so I figured I’d do a blog post (or three) to share some of what I saw.

The first thing that caught my eye was this bright green VW bug. According to TBG’s website, “This car doesn’t run on gas, so Power to the Flower is this year’s theme. This flower powered slug bug will feature plants and flowers named after songs and themes from the 1960’s.” Apparently the car is put to similar use each year, which I think is a great idea.

What a unique flower pot!

 

I really enjoyed seeing so many colorful and flowering annuals.

 

I’m guessing they have to water this garden daily since it’s so hot and dry here in Tucson.

 

It was so nice seeing all of these pretty flowering annuals.

 

This themed space is known as the Kitchen Ramada.

 

Im not sure why it’s called the Kitchen Ramada, but it was sure a pretty place to sit and look at all the colorful flowers.

 

Pretty annuals in bloom near the Kitchen Ramada.

 

I really appreciated the Zinnias along the border. Zinnias have always been one of my favorite Summer annuals.

I’ll share more pics from my visit in a couple/few future posts. There are far too many to share all at once.

Bumps in the Road

Three weeks ago, on May 6, I wrote a post describing Changes to the Plan. In it,  I revealed that we were going to stay in Tucson and use it as a home base for a year or three. Rather than buy new furniture to use here, we opted to have our stuff moved from the East Coast to Tucson. Movers were supposed to have loaded up our stuff the day I wrote that post, a Friday, and deliver it to us a few days later on Sunday or Monday.

Sounds pretty fast, right? And maybe a little too good to be true?

As it turns out, it was a lot too good to be true. The “movers” we hired turned out to be yahoos. They sorta reminded me of people who might appear on that cable show, Shipping Wars. Where they get online requests for moving quotes, don’t really read the bid requests, and promise to do the job on the cheap and quickly.

Said yahoos showed up with a cargo van to move 1,300 cubic feet of household goods weighing 7,500 pounds. It was a clusterfuck. Long story short, our stuff did not get moved.

The following week, I did what I thought was sufficient research, and contracted with a moving broker (company who arranges moves) to move our stuff from the East Coast to Tucson. The broker negotiated with a carrier, a moving company with trucks and laborers, to move our stuff. The broker lied through his teeth to me. The representative told me it could take as long as two to 10 days, but more likely would only take five or six days.

The new movers loaded up our stuff on Saturday, May 14. Before loading, they told us it would cost about $3,600 more than the broker quoted us. (The sales rep had changed my size estimate to 1,086 cubic feet, and I missed it before signing the agreement.) When I hadn’t heard any updates by the end of that week, I called the movers. That is when I learned they have up to 21 business days to deliver our stuff.  That was on May 20. My contact said she’d give us 48 hours notice and thought the stuff might arrive this week.

It’s now ten business days since our stuff was picked up by the moving company. Yesterday, I was assuming we’re not getting our stuff this week either since I haven’t heard anything from the movers (a call I placed yesterday has not been returned). Then this morning we got the news… our stuff will arrive on Sunday. Yay!!!

Meanwhile, we have moved everything out of the coach (aka the big-ass RV) and into our new-to-us house. It’s amazing how much stuff we had in the coach! We had to buy a new mattress and box-spring anyway, so at least we have had something to sleep on. Oh, and we’re using patio furniture and lawn chairs as living room furniture.

In other good news… the coach left the RV park today, headed for the shop. Finally. The damage occurred on March 15th, roughly two and a half months ago. We are lucky the RV park we’d been staying in was able to accommodate our 1.5-month extra stay.

Things are finally falling into place. It should take four weeks for the repairs on the coach to be completed. Then we can sell the too-big-for-us RV and get a small travel trailer. I’m so looking forward to getting back on the road.  Here’s hoping the coach sells quickly.

Changes to the Plan

When Mike and I started our adventure in this big-ass RV almost a year ago our plan was to travel across the US exploring as many state and national parks as we could while enjoying the various different regions of the United States. The US is a vast and varied place!

We hung out around the southeast through the end of 2021 so we could spend Christmas with our family. Then, in January, the push toward the West began.

We didn’t get to visit as many state parks as we would have liked for a couple of reasons. Being able to get two-week reservations in a state park usually means making reservations six, nine, or even 12 months in advance. Since we started our adventure sooner than anticipated, that necessary advance planning didn’t happen. The other reason is that many state and national parks either don’t have sites big enough to fit this 45-foot-long rig or roads to get to the parks that can accommodate this beast. That means we haven’t been able to go to many of the places we really want to go to.

We want to stay in those kind of parks. Staying near those parks is an okay alternative, but it’s not the same thing. That fact really hit home for me when we were in Texas visiting Big Bend National Park. We made the best of it and enjoyed our camping spot outside of the national park in Terlingua, Texas, but it would have been soooooo much more awesome if we’d had a smaller rig and could’ve camped inside of the national park.

I also spent a great deal of time making future reservations while we were in Terlingua. There was tons of availability for smaller spots in the state and national parks we are looking to visit, but very limited availability for our big rig. So I had to settle for reservations that were mostly in commercial campgrounds near the parks. I did manage to reserve spots in some cool Utah state parks, but most of our reservations were in commercial campgrounds.

After Terlingua, we were supposed to visit Carlsbad, New Mexico, where we planned to see Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains national parks. Then, just days before we were due to leave Terlingua, while we were sitting perfectly still, relaxing in the coach, the inside pane of the driver’s side window decided to shatter. We knew there’d be no getting that fixed in Terlingua. The nearest town was 80 miles away, and it wasn’t a big town. So we had to change the plan a bit, nix the visit to Carlsbad and detour through El Paso for repairs before continuing on to Las Cruces, New Mexico. The AquaHot water heater had also stopped working, too. About $1,000 later, things were fully functional and we were able to relax and enjoy our time in Las Cruces. We particularly enjoyed seeing White Sands National Park as well as the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument.

We left Las Cruces at 11:00 a.m. on March 15 and headed to Tucson, where we had a one-month reservation at Far Horizons RV Park. It was to be our first stay in a 55+ resort and we were both looking forward to the experience. It’s not the kind of place we usually like to stay–we much prefer being surrounded by nature over sitting in what’s essentially a giant parking lot surrounded by other campers–but there is a bike trail system here that Mike was excited about exploring and I was intrigued at the advertised activities on offer, such as a pottery shop, rock tumbling, glass making, etc.

We were only 18 miles away from Las Cruces when disaster struck.  We were headed west on I-10 nearing the border patrol checkpoint where traffic chokes down from two lanes to one. We were already in the right lane with plenty of room in from of us when a smaller Class C motorhome pulled into the lane in front of us. Mike applied the brakes to slow us down to regain the approprriate following distance when the Class C stopped suddenly in front of us. Mike put the brake pedal to the floor and veered off to the left to avoid the Class C, but wasn’t able to stop our mammoth coach in time. The left front corner of our coach bumped the right rear corner of the Class C. It wasn’t a hard hit–we had almost stopped–but there was a ladder mounted on the Class C that stuck out just enough to crumple the corner of our coach and shatter the windshield. We both wanted to sit there and cry. We had JUST had the water heater and driver’s window fixed, and now the thing was essentially undrivable.

It could have been worse. We were lucky that no one was seriously injured. But we knew it was going to throw a big wrench in our future plan. The COVID supply chain issues coupled with more demand for RVs in general have seriously impacted RV repair times. Issues that used to take days or weeks to fix are now taking weeks and even months for the simplest of issues.

At the time of the accident, we both knew we HAD to get to Tucson. Neither of us wanted to drive 250 miles with a shattered windshield, but we felt there would likely be more and/or better options for repairs in Tucson, which is not only much bigger than Las Cruces, but is also a winter haven for RVs.

So we used some super-strong duct tape and transparent packing tape, taped over the cracks as best as we could, and limped on our way. We crawled along I-10 at around 50 mph, stopping every hour or so to add more tape to the windshield, which was slowly disintegrating before our eyes. It was a harrowing experience. All we could do was keep plodding along, hoping for the best.

We finally reached Tucson around 6:30 p.m., just before sunset. Neither of us have ever been happier to reach a destination. It was such a relief to finally get there, safe and sound.

That was a Tuesday. I think it was Friday when the insurance adjuster paid us a visit. The following Monday, the body shop guy came. He confirmed our fears that repairs could take about a month once parts arrived. Of course, getting parts is another story. It could take a month or more. It’s been about a month since parts were ordered already.

There’s no way to know when the needed parts will arrive, so we are stuck, waiting, with no known end in sight. Lucky for us, the RV park we’re in is a haven for Snowbirds, people from  northern parts of the US and from Canada who flock to Tucson in the winter to escape the cold. Most snowbirds leave at the end of March or April to head back home. Some stragglers hang out into May, maybe June. It’s really a bit of a ghost town these days, which means there’s room for us to stay indefinitely until our RV can be repaired.

Meanwhile, we have decided we want to downsize our rig. We had both, individually been regretting having purchased such a large unit. It’s been great having so much space, but we have more space than we need. Really. We spend most of our time outside, at least when we are in the kind of campgrounds we enjoy.

We are carrying quite a bit of stuff, however, that’s necessary for full-time RV living and won’t fit into a much-smaller unit. We already have storage space rented on the East Coast housing the bulk of our belongings, so we didn’t want to rent more storage space in Tucson. We also didn’t want to get rid of even more of our stuff! That’s when we started thinking about making Tucson our home base. We explored a lot of different options. We both felt like renting would just be throwing money away and, with rents increasing at crazy rates thanks to the current housing shortage, feared we’d be putting ourselves at even more risk. Mike has always wanted to live in the desert, so we decided to buy a house here in Tucson where we can stay for a couple or three years and explore the West from here.

Once the big-ass RV is fixed, we will sell it and then buy a small, towable travel trailer that we can use for month-long trips around the western US. There’s a shortage of new RVs these days, so we don’t know when the one we want will become available, but Tucson is a great place to wait. Once we get a camper, we will also need to buy the appropriate-size truck with which to tow the thing. We may need to wait for truck availability, too. But, again, Tucson is a great place to wait.

And that’s how we ended up buying a house in Tucson, which itself was no easy feat. The real estate market here is just as crazy at it is everywhere else. Over the course of about three weeks, we looked at around 30 houses in and around the greater Tucson area and submitted three offers that were declined before finally having a fourth offer accepted.

It’s close to the bicycle trails, which Mike and I both enjoy, and has a swimming pool, a must for us if we are going to be living in the desert. It has a guest room, too, for those of you who would like to come visit.

We officially closed on Wednesday, May 4. Today, there are movers on the East Coast loading our belongings into a truck, which should be delivered to the house on Sunday or Monday. Unpacking will keep us busy for a while, but it’ll give us something to do while we wait for the coach to be repaired.

We’ve changed the plan a bit, but we haven’t changed the goal, which is still to travel around the US in an RV seeing as many state and national parks as we can. I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been stressful. Losing Belle during the whole thing didn’t help either. But, really, we can’t complain. Things could be a whole lot worse. Now we have a new plan to look forward to, and we get to live part-time in the beautiful city of Tucson.

So now y’all have the scoop.

Me and Mike, making the best of a crazy change in plans.

Critters in the Desert

As mentioned in my previous post, we went to visit Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden last week. It was so beautiful. Not only did we get to see the Chihuly Art in the Desert, we also went into the Butterfly Pavilion. The DBG’s website describes it as, “…a 3,200 square foot open-air structure, featuring lush garden plantings, a water feature, thousands of live butterflies, engaging programming and a state-of-the-art nursery space.”

We didn’t linger terribly long. It was cool, but the garden facility/grounds is quite large. Plus, they may have had thousands of butterflies, but there were only about seven different species, many of which I had seen before. And it was CROWDED. I did manage to capture a few pretty pics though.

Queen Butterfly

Like Monarchs, the Queen butterfly needs milkweed to survive. Have YOU planted milkweed in your garden yet? If you decide to plant some, be careful as it’s the kind of plant that spreads underground. If you only have a small space and don’t want it encroaching on other plants, put it in a container.

Zebra Longwing

There were oodles of these butterflies in the pavilion. It seemed like there were more of these than any of the other species on display. I saw quite a few of these when we were in Florida. It’s actually one of my favorite kind of butterflies.

White Peacock

 

Pipevine Swallowtail

 

This one wasn’t identified on the chart they had displayed in the pavilion.

 

Buckeye, a little worse for wear.

The next two are both Zebra Longwings, which were well represented. I think the pics are pretty, though, so wanted to share.

Zebra Longwing

 

Zebra Longwing

The coolest critter sighting is thanks to Mike who spotted this guy hunting in the gardens outside of and away from the butterfly pavilion.

Roadrunner with lunch.

 

Roadrunners really are pretty fast. I feel kind of lucky to have captured these pics.

 

Roadrunner, rockin’ it. He’s on a rock, get it? LOL

That’s it for critters photographed at the DBG. Below are pics I captured yesterday here at the RV park. I have no idea what kind of lizard it is.  Its body was about 8 or 10 inches long. In all, from its nose to the tip of its tail, I think it was about 14 or 18 inches long. But that’s a guesstimate.

Mystery lizard at RV park.

 

Mystery lizard at RV park. Check out that blue back. I think it might have a collar, where the skin around its neck stands up at times, but I don’t know for sure.

There are lots and lots of different kinds of lizards here in the Sonoran Desert. I have so much to see and learn! I’m really looking forward to it, too. 🙂