Rainy Day and her friend, Kay get up every morning around 6.00, get dressed, and go for a walkabout in the gorgeous park across the street from their motel. It isn’t that Rainy Day and Kay are gung ho about mornings (those of you who know Rainy D know she things mornings are about the worst time ever, and that even God doesn’t get up in the mornings!) but they do want to get their walking in before it gets hot. As it is, the night temperatures seldom dip below 85 degrees.
The park they walk in is a long ‘wash’ most, if not all, man made to act as a catch basin for their flash floods. There are short golf courses, golf Frisbee set ups, a creek that runs through it (several miles from North Scottsdale to the Salt River). The creek empties into ponds before exiting as another creek, repeating their pond/creek bit until into the Salt.
If I’m remembering correctly, the Salt River is dammed, and the resulting reservoir is used for boating and water sports.
“Our” pond has a small island at the north west end. On the island are a couple trees, a bazillion noisy birds in the trees, a few ducks, and a gander with two gooses. (Rainy Day flunked grammar, can you tell?) That old gander does not like anyone coming near his harem. He hisses and charges at bikers (on the path), walkers (on the path), and dogs (on leashes). So far, he has only hissed at Rainy Day; however, she says if he attacks, she will hiss and attack back!
We had a haboob again last night. Not so bad here, but the western part of the Greater Phoenix Megalopolis area got quite a bit of sand. Rainy Day thinks it a bit funny that so many Americans suffer from Arab Anxiety, and yet we now call our dust storms ‘haboobs’ after the Arabian word for their dust storms. Rainy Day thinks it’s a miracle that anyone from a different language can ever learn American English the way we add words from other languages and don’t think about it twice. We took Typhoon from the Japanese, Hurricane from the Mayans, skosh from the Koreans, milch from the Germans, and how many words can you think of we took from other languages??? (Use the comment box and let me know.)
Mark is doing well. He does, however, look like someone has used him to practice slicing, dicing, and stapling. He’s got scars on the front and back, and oh-my. He is really doing well, as long as he takes it slow and doesn’t overdo it, which is hard when one is Mark;-)
The pictures below are from the Walkabout in the Botanical Gardens. Alas, I brought my camera, not the cord to download to my computer. Gray hairs, you know????
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| Some kind of cactus with yellow fruits |
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| Palo Verde tree trunks |
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| Sticker Plant |
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| Flower hanging from tree |
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| Teddy Bear Cholla |
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