photo heavy post- last weekend's food and garden tourism

A week ago Saturday, Tom and I headed south to Tucson, for lunch. Yes, lunch! (and a bit of sightseeing, in addition to eating.) It was a beautiful day for a drive, and we headed out early...

our destination

We got to the restaurant  in South Tucson at about 10:30 am to wait
for their 11:00 lunch opening. And we were not the first people there- it was a good thing we left home early!

The restaurant is 'Mi Nidito' which means 'My Little Nest' in Spanish;
it's been serving food in Tucson since 1952, and was featured
on the Travel Channel show Man vs. Food.

We waited with some very nice people out front of the restaurant, and got a booth when the restaurant opened... our waitress asked, 'do you need a menu?' (apparently they get a lot of regulars who know what they're going to order!) Us, now, we needed some time to check out the offerings on the menu, so we could narrow it down. The couple in the booth behind us didn't need menus; they ordered straightaway, and were giving us a bit of advice about what was good. In talking to them, we found out that was because they've eaten lunch at Mi Nidito every Saturday for the past 20 years! Now that is definitely a ringing endorsement! One of the restaurant's other 'claims to fame' is one of their previous customers: former President Bill Clinton- they even have the President's booth marked in the restaurant! (and no, we didn't sit in it... lol!)

Our table: we had no idea we were going to get this much food!!

The food was delicious, and the portions were quite generous: we brought home plenty of leftovers!  We got a Tostada with chiles as an appetizer (which is sort of like a Mexican pizza), I got chicken enchiladas with red sauce, and Tom got a beef chimichanga. The chimichanga (which was the size of a pillow, lol!) was made with their house specialty: a shredded beef called birria. Birria is brisket which is slow cooked with chiles and spices, then shredded. Neither of us could place the flavors in the shredded beef, but luckily we happened to see the television show episode again last week- turns out that the 'secret ingredient' in the shredded beef is pickling spices, which gives it a really complex, mellow flavor! The food was all delicious, and we'll definitely be eating there again.

After we ate lunch, we headed back north to do some sightseeing at a cactus nursery we'd heard about from some friends who live in Tucson. (On the way, we saw an estate sale, so we stopped for a quick look. Turns out it's a recurring sale, and there was so much stuff that a quick look wasn't possible- so I'll save that one for another time, lol!)

The cactus nursery was total visual overload-- I definitely want to go back again, and maybe bring at least few plants back home with me. I'd love to have (at least) one of everything, but we don't have nearly enough room! For now, I'll have to settle for admiring the plants in the photos and post just a few of the many pictures I took to give you an idea of the scope of the place:

one of the (huge) cacti right at the main entrance-
I don't know what kind it is, but I'd love one!

 The property is on approximately 10 acres, and contains rows and rows of nursery plants and greenhouses for propagating cacti- check this out!  (and don't forget, you can click on any of the photos to make it larger.)

one of the many propagation houses on the property

I can't even begin to imagine how many hundreds of plants are in this greenhouse, let alone in all of the greenhouses on the property- there had to be at least 10 or 15 greenhouses altogether (the actual number is 24, according to their website). Looking at the pots in these houses closer, it's even more amazing to contemplate:

teeny, tiny baby cacti

Some of these cacti are so very tiny that you can't even see any of the plants themselves; all you can see are the feathery cactus spines. I had to add in the quarter when I took the photo just to add a sense of scale to the picture.

I don't even know what kind of cacti this is, but I
thought it was really cute, since it was so tiny!

As we wandered around on the property, we came upon a 'cacti compost heap' of sorts. We both would love to figure out some way to bring this impressive Saguaro skeleton home with us... unfortunately our family room isn't big enough for it, nor was it for sale (and even if it had been, I'm sure we couldn't have afforded it, lol). But wouldn't it make a striking accent piece in a room, preferably with a spotlight on it?!?

A view from the nursery's property off to the east. These are either the Santa Catalina mountains or the Rincon Mountains- I'm not sure which. (geography was never my strong suit.) Regardless of what mountain range it is, it's a gorgeous view. That's one of the things I love most about living in the desert, the expansive vistas and the fact that you can see around you for miles.

A really cool looking aloe plant in the main greenhouse!! he looks kinda mean,
doesn't he?!? I definitely would love to have one of these for our backyard!

a close-up of the individual flowers in the aloe flower cluster-
I bet the hummingbirds would love it, too!

A view of their main display garden... cacti can definitely make
an eye-catching presentation when you landscape with them!

A few (very large) containers in the display garden area. 

a sea of Golden Barrel Cacti in the main greenhouse area

I have tons more photos from the nursery- we were only there for a couple hours, but I took close to 100 photos in that time. This place was amazing, and we probably didn't even see half of it in the time we were there! If you want more info about it, you can Google it: Bach's Cactus Nursery. Since they don't ship plants, they don't have too much of a website, but if you click on this link: Danger Garden blog post about Bach's nursery you can read a very nice blog post written by a gardener /  blogger that contains many more photos of the place. (and I'll post more of my cacti photos soon!)

we set the alarm for 12:30 am last night...

--what would get us up in the middle of the night, you ask?? This: This is a variety of "night-blooming cereus," an unusual cactus that has huge, striking blooms. You can read about it here, and scroll to the bottom of this page (bottom left photo) to see a picture of a mature specimen. Only problem is, they don't bloom during the day! We got our cactus from a friend of Tom's a couple months ago, and have been keeping a close eye on it the last couple weeks once we saw the flower buds start to appear. Yesterday afternoon, it looked like these two were going to open-- we checked on it a couple times throughout the evening, but no luck, by the time we went to bed. So, the alarm clock was set.

The flowers are 6-7 inches long, and about 5 inches across. I'm assuming they're pollinated by some sort of moth, but I can't find any info about what kind. According to the internet, the flowers are very fragrant, but I couldn't smell a thing. Maybe my nose wasn't awake yet?? The internet also says the plant will eventually grow to be a branched clump 30-50 feet high, but that it's a slow-grower. (thank goodness!! But it will eventually make a very impressive statement in the backyard.)

Although I was perfectly willing to stumble back to bed and save looking at the photos for this morning, they were definitely worth waking up for!

scrappy goings-on

yes, I do still use all the scrapping supplies in my craft room... not always for SB pages, but I have gotten some photos printed, and am slowly getting my scrapping mojo back... it helps to have great photos of some really beautiful scenery, too! (you can click on any of the photos to see them larger.) this is a 2-page layout that evolved over the course of a couple weeks-- I just love how our photos of the San Xavier del Bac mission turned out; it's such a beautiful place, I don't think you could get a bad photo! We visited there when we took a short trip thru SW Arizona last Christmas... it was started during the 1600s, and was finished in 1797, and sits in the middle of the Tohono O'odham (which means Desert People) Reservation just outside Tucson. I've never even been inside anyplace that old before; the history of the place was astounding to me. (it's still a working Catholic church, even today!)

This 5x7 photo was my first inspiration; I really love how the photo captured the glow of the whitewashed adobe, and the sandstone carvings on the facade. I wanted to show off the photo, but also do something a bit "artistic" with the page. I started with a page layout sketch I found on the internet (I think it was from the Pencil Lines blog, but I'm not sure, since I lost my notes), and changed it up a bit. Since the "nickname" of the church is The White Dove of the Desert, I decided to use a chipboard bird accent. The brown patterned paper was chosen to bring out the sandstone color on the building, and I really liked the look of the fabric on the page. At the bottom, I used some really small sticker letters to spell out "San Xavier del Bac Mission" across both pages- they're only about 1/4 inch across, so they were a bit of a pain to put in place, but I like the look.

Here's the second page of the layout-- it has another chipboard accent, a bit more of the fabric, the same patterned paper, and more rickrack.

This 2-page layout is photos of the interior-- the inside of the church is chock-full of paintings and statues, all the way up the walls and ceiling. There's so many ornate carvings, statues, and paintings that you couldn't possibly hope to see all of it, or take really good photos of some of it, but we tried.

The focal point of the lefthand page is the main sanctuary of the church facing the altar; it was decorated for Christmas when we went. I decided to use blue and red, to accent the photos-- I also used a patterned paper that looks like peeling paint to play up the age. I used a few chipboard shapes painted gold, to match the pattern on the red paper. I also decided to write my journaling with gold pen (which may not have been the best choice for this page, since it's kinda hard to read).

The other page of this layout-- more of the "peeling paint" paper as a border, and a bit of the red and gold scroll paper used as a photo corner. I cropped some close-ups of statues, and had them printed as 2x3 wallet sized photos, which I lined up on the border. (The gold writing looks tons better on the dark blue, doesn't it??) I also used the teeny letter stickers to identify my photos for journaling purposes. I have tons more photos from the mission, but they're just going to go into a regular photo album, I think. Now, I just have to work on layouts from our visit to Tombstone, AZ and the ostrich ranch. (yes, I wrote ostrich ranch... check it out here. Ostriches are kinda scary close up, but it was a hoot to see the place!)

our latest backyard visitor- or, Sedona thinks she is a bird dog.

Sedona doesn't know anything about sheep, but she does seem to be a bird dog! She always tries to get the hummingbirds when they come to the feeder, and this particular day, she really had it in for this visitor to the backyard... I don't get it; the birds don't do anything to her, but they really bother her! (maybe she's trying to herd them??)

This guy posed quite nicely for me, even with all of Sedona's barking and jumping around; he even waited while I went back into the house to get the camera. I think it is a Eurasian dove, which is quite a bit larger than a Mourning Dove. I haven't seen him since; I guess Sedona wasn't a very nice hostess!

spring in the desert

spring has been busting out all over in the AZ desert... for the first time, some of our cactus have actually flowered! It seems like a long wait, but really, they've only been planted for a few years. This odd-looking specimen is a spruce cone cactus (aka turd cactus- that's what we call it, anyway, since that's sorta what the pieces look like). It surprised us with some beautiful white flowers!

a close-up of the flower... these flowers are just gorgeous, although they don't last- each flower is only open for a few hours, then disappears.

One of the prickly pear flowers; these were even harder to catch while they were open, since they only seemed to open in the mid-afternoon, and were already closing by the time I got home from work.

The lantana are definitely "busting out all over" next to the driveway... I've already pruned them once, and will soon have to again!

it's spring- the lantanas are blooming!

it's spring- the lantanas are blooming! Originally uploaded by crimsoncat05

they started blooming in March, actually, but the plants have finally taken off and spread out quite a bit. I'm still not used to gardening in the desert, but I've realized you have to get the interest from different places- more textures and sculptural shapes, rather than a riot of greens and colors from flowers, like back in Illinois. Even though I will always miss my peonies, irises, and hollyhocks, I can still have patches of color, like this one stretch of color next to the driveway which always strikes a cheery note against the light colored gravel.