Japanese Maple

This beautiful tree has red leaves in the Spring and then they turn green in the Summer. It is growing in front of our house in Provo and is going to be one of my favorite trees, I am sure.

A Spring Bouquet

I usually associate Spring flowers with something yellow. When I was in graduate school, I had a favorite notebook with a photo on the cover called "Spring Flowers of the Wasatch." Little did I know that fifty years later, I would be taking my own photos of Spring flowers in the Wasatch Mountains. I think that life has a lot of interesting cycles. I also could not have dreamed that I would be taking those photos electronically and publishing them on an international network. These kinds of facts make life more than interesting.

Long Toes

This is the Greater Earless Lizard (Cophosaurus texanus). Yes, there is a lesser earless lizard. I didn't think that any lizards had ears, but what they mean is that the lizard lacks ear openings. Spring is an excellent time to go out lizard watching. It is just warm enough to have them come out and bask in the sun and not so hot that they seek shade under the rocks. Depending on the time of year, a walk in the desert can be filled with scurrying lizards or there may not be any out at all.

Symmetry in form

The curves and patterns of the eucalyptus tree trunk match almost perfectly with the aloe flowers. There is always an interesting conjunction of color and form when exotic woods are paired with flowers even when the flowers are not particularly showy.

Spring at the Pickett Post

For some, it would be hard to imagine that this is a scene in the middle of the Arizona-Sonora Desert. Pickett Post Mountain in the background is located just east and south of Superior, Arizona. The photograph is taken from the Demonstration Garden at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum. The contrast between the lush green meadow and the trees and the desert beyond is striking. But that is way the desert is. We can live in beautiful green oasis where there is water available. This meadow happens to lie along the Queen Creek, a mostly dry creek bed, but with an abundant supply of underground water. This water is used by the Arboretum to create a huge botanical garden with plants and trees from all over the world.

Mourning Dove

During my life, I have always been surrounded with the low, mournful cry of the mourning doves (Zenaida macroura). This is especially true during those times when we lived without air conditioning in Phoenix. In those days, the city was so much smaller and had so much less traffic, that the sounds of the desert were always around us. Now that we are sealed up in our air conditioning, I only hear the call of the doves when I happen to be outside. It is one of the most distinctive and recognizable sounds I can remember from my childhood, even before I could associate the sound with a specific type of bird. They are common throughout the entire continent of North America and into Central America except the far North of Canada and Alaska.

Do Not Turn???

We had to go back and figure out this one. No, the sign hasn't fallen down. It looks more like they ran out of no right turn signs and made do with a not left turn one.