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Bill and Mary have split their time between
Arizona and New Mexico for the past 9 weeks, currently in Tucson. They’ll be heading homeward on Saturday,
making a few family type pit stops along the way. Since the forecast indicates rain for Tuesday
through Friday today was the perfect day to get together. Sunny and in the 70s...great weather for taking
a walk.
We headed to Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, which
is located in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains and is a wonderful safe
place to stroll and enjoy what the Sonoran Desert has to offer. The pathways/roads are paved although there
are some trails that maybe the more adventurous would want to tackle. Not me...while my spirit may have wanted to
wander through the desert my body wisely choose to stay on the path. This place had it all: mountains, canyons, many varieties of cacti, waterfall, picnic areas, and bathrooms. Lots of people just out walking on a fine
Monday afternoon. There are also trams
to make it easier for everyone to enjoy the experience.
Bill and Mary have been there before so they
were our guides. We took our time,
talking and just enjoying being outside together. A couple of Christmases ago, all four of us
got Fitbits from Ezra and Anna...we all had ‘em on today to count our
steps. Mary, Bill and Kim all reached
10,000 before the walk was over...I had to get my last 500+ when Kim and I
stopped at Costco. You’d think that the
person with the shortest legs/stride (me!) would get the most steps.
We played around taking pictures...of the
scenery and of the four of us. Then we
went out to eat at the Arizona Pizza Company, maker of the largest calzones I
have ever seen. And as it turns out the
slice of pizza I ordered could have fed two people. I shouldn’t have ordered the fries along with
it.
It was hard to believe that it was going on
5 o’clock when we said our good-byes.
Time sure flies, doesn’t it? We
got caught smack dab in the thick of Tucson rush hour on our way back to camp. How do people deal with that on a daily
basis? said the girl from the one horse town. 😧
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Kim
isn’t imaging tonight as the sky started clouding over before we left Tucson. However, the temperature has stayed in the
70s so it’s a pleasant night. We walked
down to our scorpion site but no luck tonight.
Turned over lots of boards but we came up empty. Well, we did find items laying around that fluoresced under the black light. That
lends a certain eeriness to a nighttime walkabout.
Peanuts...we found peanuts strewn around that were fluorescing when hit
with the black light. Couldn’t find anything
online about it but I know what we saw.
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| Kim is for size perspective |
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I’ve read about ‘nurse plants’ many times
when looking at information about cacti; however, I’ve just started keying into
it when walking through the desert. Saw
many examples today of young cacti hiding in the shade of another plant. This is information I found on the Birds &
Blooms website:
Despite the thousands of seeds that are
released by each cactus, only a tiny fraction actually grow into new cactus
plants. Most would not survive if it were not for “nurse Plants”. These
plants provide much needed protection from the sun, cold winter temperatures
and predators (including humans).
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| Little cactus among the nurse plants |
For most of the smaller cacti species,
Bursage (Ambrosia
deltoidea) most often serves as the nurse plant. Bursage is also often
the first nurse plant for very small Saguaro cacti.
Creosote (Larrea
tridentata), Palo Verde, Mesquite and Ironwood trees are often found with the
larger species of cacti growing underneath them, such as Saguaros.
So the next time that you have the
opportunity to take a walk in the desert, look around. You will most
likely see many examples of this unique relationship of “nurse plants” helping
young cactus survive until they are full-grown.
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No bike miles today
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