Upcoming Performance – June 7, 2008

If you’re in the Phoenix area on the evening of June 7th, come out to the City of Gilbert’s Riparian Institute and enjoy a nature walk through the 110-acre preserve and listen to music by several members of the Mesa Symphony and yours truly. I’ll be playing harp and classical guitar near where the walk [...]

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Arizona Desert Wildflowers

Yesterday’s trip with D. through the Miami-Globe area and on further east onto the San Carlos Apache Reservation was a delight – great scenery and companionship, lots of humorous moments, good road music, beautiful weather, plus the chance to practice some of the new photography skills that I am learning.
Associating with a professional photographer is [...]

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Moonlight on High Country Snows and Rain in the Desert

As I drove across Garland Prairie last week, the light of a full moon illumined the snow and the pines, casting deep shadows across the frozen ground. It was a beautiful and a bittersweet sight. The song of a great horned owl greeted me as I got out of my car and crunched through the [...]

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Dancin’ With the River

Fun, friends, hikes up side canyons to hot springs, wildlife–it was soooo good to get out on the river! The weather was absolutely perfect–low eighties air temp, low fifties water temp. The sky was clear and we had a full moon. It was a real stroke of luck for it to be so [...]

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The Autumn Leaves

I haven’t blogged in quite a while and I’m just now posting the aspen pics I promised.
The leaves were already pretty well gone up on the San Francisco Peaks when I came up from Phoenix about three weeks ago. I did find a couple of late-turners, though, and discovered one tree that had been [...]

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Sunflowers in the Arizona Sunshine

It’s getting close to the last hurrah for the wild sunflowers that dot my yard and line Arizona’s roadways in the late summer. They are definitely getting close to “bloomed out.” These two pictures were taken about a week ago in my front yard. The ones I saw today, on my return trip from Phoenix, [...]

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Meteors and Moonshadows Near the Mogollon Rim

0500 MST, Parks, AZ – The Aurigid Meteor Shower was well worth staying up for, but I’m just about ready to call it a night. I saw several dozen meteors between 0330 and 0440 MST, some of them fairly bright. There were about half a dozen that were truly “ooh” and “aah” worthy, despite [...]

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Aurigid Meteor Shower

Tonight we’re on a once in a lifetime pass through the dust trail of comet Kiess, a known long period comet. Margie sent me a link on the Aurigid meteor shower from NASA’s Ames Research Center website.
The Aurigid shower should be visible from the far western United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Mexico for about an [...]

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Chilling Out in the High Country

Fall is just around the corner in the Arizona high country. The nighttime low was 42 degrees Farenheit last night and this is the first morning since spring that I’ve had to go back in the house and get a jacket for my morning sojourn out on the deck.
There were blue jays hopping about in [...]

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Fresh Perspective

It’s funny but on reviewing my last post in light of a comment, I realized that it could easily be misunderstood. I decided to go ahead and post something by way of clarification that I’ve had on the back burner for awhile. It continues the sky and mountain imagery that seems to be such a [...]

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Rare and Beautiful Weather Phenomenon

0534 MST, Parks, Arizona – The rising sun illumines one area of virga, a weather phenomenon where rainfall evaporates before it can reach the ground:

Within minutes a whole veil of virga, glowing orange in the early morning sky, forms to the west of the San Francisco Peaks. This photo gives only a rough idea [...]

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Distant Thunder

There’s a lot of rumbling off in the distance, but I think I can get a post in before the next round of monsoon activity gets too close. That’s the story of my life lately -  trying to squeeze in online sessions between thunderstorms. It’s led to a lot of very late nights recently, but [...]

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Arizona Summer Monsoon

The late morning through afternoon thunderstorms, so characteristic of midsummer in the Arizona high country, have been playing havoc with my computer work. Sometimes I can sneak some work in early in the day, but most of it has to happen from late afternoon to the wee hours of the morning, in order to avoid [...]

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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Your Nose…

There’s smoke in the air, drifting in from somewhere in the area, but it’s been misty most of the day and I have no idea where the smoke is originating. As a result, I’ve been antsy all afternoon. I keep getting up and going outside and looking around; I feel like I should be doing [...]

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Arizona Highlands Sunrise

One Way to Become an Early Riser: Elmo has been making a habit of cavorting around the bedroom in the wee hours of the morning and waking me up. Meowing and little cat paws tromping across my belly have a way of ending a peaceful night’s dreams and launching my day earlier than expected. The [...]

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