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#FOTD: Budding cactus
Today’s entry for Cee’s flower of the day photo challenge is a simple snapshot, taken while I was on a lunchtime walk at work. It’ll win no prizes, but I couldn’t walk past this adorable blooming cactus without capturing it. Since moving to Tucson, I’ve become completely charmed by cacti. I’ve always been a lush cottage garden sort of person, but now that I’m surrounded by desert flora, I’m learning to appreciate the shapes and textures of these amazing plants. See the hint of rust and red in the spines? And the cheerful, whimsical shape of the plant and its pointy buds? I plead guilty to personifying plants, but this…
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#CWBC: Arlington National Cemetery
This week’s theme for Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge (CWBC) is Numbers. That theme plays out two ways in this photo: literal numbers on the headstones, the years of birth and death, but more powerfully in the numbers *of* headstones. A visit to Arlington National Cemetery makes tangible the number of people who have died in service to the United States, and of course there are many more who are buried elsewhere. It’s one of the few truly solemn places I’ve ever visited. One of our Tourmobile guides through Arlington was a former military man. As he drove us around the cemetery, he spoke of the shared sacrifice of…
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#CMMC: Up close and personal with a saguaro
The theme for Cee’s Midweek Madness Challenge (CMMC) this week is Closeup or Macro. I fell in love with macro photography years ago, when I first bought a decent point and shoot with a macro setting and started taking closeups of flowers. I still take closeups of flowers, but it’s fun to get in close with other subjects too. I’ve written on here before about noticing the details of life and of seeing life through a macro lens, and the older I get, the more value I see in those practices. I live in the Sonoran Desert, home of the saguaro cactus. They are everywhere down here–along the freeway, on…
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A beautiful day in the neighborhood #5: Mexican yucca at the Tucson Botanical Garden
OK, so I’m cheating just a little bit. These cool plants aren’t, strictly speaking, in my neighborhood–but they almost are. The Tucson Botanical Garden is here in midtown, only about a mile from my house. If you’re ever in the area, I highly recommend a visit.
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#CMMC: New Year’s Eve at the Grand Canyon
Cee has created a new photo challenge! Can you tell I love photo challenges? This one is Cee’s Midweek Madness Challenge (CMMC), and this week’s theme is, words ending in W. I went for the obvious winter choice, SNOW. I’ve told the story of my first trip to the Grand Canyon on this blog before–recently, in fact, in my New Years Time Travel post late last month, so I won’t repeat it so soon. I will say that winter is a wonderful time to visit the Canyon. The North Rim is closed in the winter, but the more popular South Rim is open year-round (assuming the roads are passable, and…
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#CWBC: Road through Monument Valley
This week’s theme for Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge (CBWC) is Vanishing Point.
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#FOTD: Coke can flower
For Cee’s Flower of the Day photo challenge. We live only a mile or so from the Tucson Botanical Garden, and we decided to check it out during Winter Break. We had to cancel our Winter Break travel plans due to the Microbe that Must not be Named, so we are exploring our new city instead (outside only, masked and socially distanced). According to the audio tour: This shady barrio (neighborhood) garden came to life with the help of local Mexican-American gardeners and honors the distinctive gardens and yards found in Tucson’s Mexican-American neighborhoods… the distinctive decorative style featur[es] ‘found objects,’ family mementos and whimsical use of recycled materials. https://tucsonbotanical.org/tours/nuestro-jardin-audio-tour/…
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#SoCS: Our choices make our lives (with bonus pics from Saguaro National Park)
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; this week’s prompt is: “opt.” Use it as a word or find a word with “opt” in it and base your post on that. Yesterday my husband and I opted out of unpacking, organizing, and cleaning. Instead of doing those responsible adult things, we opted to explore the western unit of Saguaro National Park, about a half-hour’s drive from our new home in Tucson. I read a lot of self-help books, because I want to be the best version of me than I can, and I have a lot of dreams I want…
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Utah escape/escapades – Bryce Canyon
Several of my more recent posts have been about moving, because, well, we’re moving. Specifically, we’re moving to Tucson, AZ, in a little over a week. As I write this post, I am surrounded by boxes, and my sinuses are irritated by all the dust I’ve stirred up while packing and cleaning. I’m excited about this move and my new job (which I start on Monday–yikes!), but even though I see this move as a big positive, it’s still stressful. There are a thousand little details to keep track of and so, so much work to do. This will be our third big move in a little over a decade,…
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Photo safari through a historic Flagstaff neighborhood
My first novel, Vanishing, Inc., is set in a fictional mountain town in Arizona called Ponderosa. I live in Flagstaff, a not-so-fictional mountain town in Arizona that makes an appearance in my story, but since I’m writing a paranormal romance (a time travel romance, to be specific), I wanted the freedom of a fictional setting. I don’t want some overly-literal reader leaving me a one-star review because there are, in fact, no time portals in Flagstaff. Hey, you know it could happen. I’m sure plenty of tourists have walked through standing stones in Scotland and become very grumpy because they did not immediately find themselves in the arms of a lusty…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
