Saturday, March 18…Superbloom (Mister Wives)

    I’ve read that cardinals prefer to ground feed, so I put one of the seed cakes on the ground yesterday to test this out.  I’ve seen the female cardinal and a curved-bill thrasher pecking at it but not the male cardinal yet.  The interesting thing is that I haven’t seen a curved-bill thrasher in the yard until yesterday. Maybe birds can smell.

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   Up earlier than my body wanted to be for the Shamrock. Made it to the Crossroads Park in plenty of time to make a pre-race potty stop and take a couple of selfies then it was time to put on our game faces.

   The 5K had both walkers and runners…obviously the 10K and Half-Marathoners were all runners. The race was held at the same park as last year, but the course was different due to construction. A few more slopes on this year’s route.  Kim and I walked together until he declared that he really had to go to the bathroom when we were a bit more than a mile from the finish; at that point I told him to walk his best pace instead of holding back for me. He pulled ahead of me but was within a jog if I really wanted to catch up. I used my metronome app as a pacesetter and I kept pace with Kim for almost the first 2 miles but I think the biggest help in maintaining a consistent quick walk was challenging myself to pass the person in front of me.  Nothing like a little anonymous competition to get the legs moving.

   I was beyond pleased when the finish line was in sight and the race clock read just over 51 minutes.  I did it…I beat last year’s time!!  My official time was 50:39 and Kim’s was 49:56. Kim placed 3^rd in his age group so he got to step up on the podium again. This year there were 4 men in his age group, so he really did finish ahead of someone. Last year it turned out there were only two men in his age group so he was guaranteed a medal and he finished 2^nd. 😉  This year I finished 6^th out of 10 in my age group but I finished in under an hour and as a bonus beat last year’s time so I’m calling it a win.

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   I had no energy when we got back to camp so I sat outside soaking up the sun like the lizards do. But I wasn’t idle…I focused my camera on the seed cake on the ground, set it for remote live view and watched it from my phone, hoping the cardinals that were flitting around the tree would land on the seed so I could get a picture. No such luck. All I saw were the shadows from the bushes moving around the yard and the battery power indicator on my phone moving in the downward direction.

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   Helped Kim with his astrophotography notebook this afternoon. He did the research about the galaxies and nebulae, jotted down some pertinent information, then asked me to be the designated writer for each page. I was happy to help out and the notebook was on display by the telescope before 3 o’clock. 

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   A caracara and a raven showed up together on the desert cam.  It looked like they were in some sort of odd parade with the raven leading the way. Also got a bobcat on camera at 1:30 this morning and a healthy looking coyote at about 1 p.m.

   Today a cow finally showed up on a cell cam. But it wasn’t the desert cam as expected, it was the Nutt Rd. cam. There is a herd of free-range cattle out in the desert and their tracks are all around the wash where the camera is but they haven’t shown up on the camera.  Nutt Rd has a herd of fenced in cattle across the road from the camera but no free-range cattle are in this area….so I wonder if one escaped and just moseyed on over to see what the other animals found so interesting. 

   And Glory Be! About 2:30 this afternoon a roadrunner showed up on the Nutt Rd. cam.  The picture isn’t blurred so I’m assuming he was out walking. It’s so cool to get one on the cell cam; getting a picture with a regular camera is tough because of the roadrunner’s tendency to put on the speed when people are nearby.

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   I’ve read that this is the year for a ‘superbloom’ of wildflowers and I would tend to agree.  I’ve seen flowers along roads that have never had flowers and shoulders along the frontage road and Park Link Rd are sporting 5 to 7 foot wide carpets of lupine. It looks like the I-10 median between Marana and Picacho has suddenly been painted yellow and the base of Picacho Peak has an orange glow in the sunlight that I’ve never seen before.  Weekends have been crazy with people stopping for pictures along the frontage road and Picacho Peak State Park has been experiencing a tremendous amount of visitors due to the colorful flowers this spring. It’s reported that people should get there early to avoid the 30 to 40 minute waits that have been occurring between the hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.  Wow!  That’s a long time to wait to see flowers.

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   Ended up taking a solo ride again today…well, I had Moxie with me so I wasn’t totally solo. Kim and I took off together at about 3:30 p.m., but the sun was proving to be a problem for his eyes so he went back to camp. The silver lining to that was that supper was almost ready by the time I got back. First time the oven has been used this trip and there seems to be a slight discrepancy between the selected temperature and the actual temperature.  But the casserole was still tasty despite its having a slightly crispified bottom.    

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40 Days of Lent challenge: Confess to God those areas where you have built barriers between yourself and others. Done!

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