Desert Gardens

Today's adventure took us to the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. It was a beautiful place to spend a couple of hours walking the trails and admiring the desert plants. We both loved it - the day wasn't too warm so the walking was pleasant.

The first thing we saw upon entering the grounds (admission was free today for some reason) were these magnificent glass sculptures of desert plants.



There were four or five different 'loops' to follow. There were lots of very large, very old Saguaro cacti there, where they've been growing for a hundred years or more. This one below has a curious deformity of one of its arms.


This next one Lloyd declared to be 'the perfect Saguaro' - two arms symmetrically placed on the trunk of the plant, standing upright like a true Taco Bell cactus, or is it Taco Time...I can never remember which is which.


These next ones aren't Saguaros but just look at how tall they are. They totally dwarf Lloyd.


And we rested along the route - Lloyd against the bridge rail...


...and me on a conveniently located bench.


This tall stick tree has red blossoms way up on top.



And here we are having fun together.


This mountain was in a lot of my pictures. Its one of the Papago Buttes and is very curious looking, riddled with large holes.


There were half a dozen welded metal sculptures in the gardens, all painted bright primary colors.


This was part of the boulder garden.


This next one is a close up of the Papago Butte shown before.



And the mountain in the background here is Camelback Mountain


This beautiful spot was an actual desert oasis.


We didn't notice until the pictures were downloaded that this rock looks like a buffalo or calf head reclining. Can you see it? There's a small cactus just above his eye, in front of his ear.


And that's just a few of my pictures from the Desert Botanical Garden. I'll definitely be going back there again, hopefully when the cacti are in bloom.

It was a lovely way to spend a day.