Family Comes to Visit

Our son Eric, wife Liz and our grandchildren from Colorado, Kylie and John, came to Arizona last weekend. They stayed in Scottsdale in a condo owned by Liz's sister. Friday we joined them for dinner--a bucket of chicken from KFC.

Saturday we met them at the Musical Instrument Museum. A visit there is always an opportunity to learn something new.

The variety of zithers--stringed instruments, aka guitars--is amazing.

I had never heard of thumb pianos before.  Obviously, they aren't unique.

All of these are drums, zithers and rattles from South Africa.

Such a variety of horns and other wind instruments.

Alice Cooper was never an entertainer I listened to.  But he certainly had interesting clothes.

          

There were displays on how instruments are made.  Here you can see the parts of a grand piano case.

This is a primitive bagpipe.

 

Many instruments were handmade.  Here you can see a banjo and bass violin.

We don't go out to eat often, so we first experienced touchless menus when we went to lunch at Diego Pops, a taco restaurant in Phoenix.  I guess these menus--which we pulled up on our phones--is the way to avoid touching menus others have handled--it's a Covid thing, I guess.  We did have a good time at lunch.

Several years ago, Eric had flown down to visit us and we went to the Botanical Gardens.  He wanted to go there again, so we met them there on Sunday.

In addition to the desert plants, the gardens always have major art displays.  The last time we were there, we saw numerous glass sculptures by Chihuly. This time it was Wild Rising by Cracking Art.  It included numerous meercats and at least one giant snail.

But what we were really interested in were the cactus and other desert plants.

These small cactus plants remind me of green eggs being broken open by the baby bird inside.

This is certainly an unusual tree.

I was reminded of stacked stones when I looked at this cactus.

Eric, Kylie and John enjoyed walking the labyrinth.

We all enjoyed the shade in this ramada.

And there were even more sculptures--including some large birds and unusual stacks of small birds.

Desert Botanical Garden

One of the reasons we love spending our winters in Arizona is because we love the desert and the plants that grow here.  Saturday we visited the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden.  In addition to the plants, we saw the art exhibit, Wild Rising, by Cracking Art.  The large plastic figures sure are colorful, but we weren't at all sure they enhanced the desert.  But here are a few photos of the displays.

Some coyotes, maybe?

Very large rabbits

Birds and their eggs

Penquins?

 Meerkats.  They are near the Chihuly glass plants from a previous year's art focus.

Frogs overhead

And, finally, what we came to see.  Many of the barrel cactus plants were blooming.

Look at this young cactus, maybe a saguaro, with babies.  This is how some cactus spread.

The patterns and textures of cactus plants is interesting.

This is a crested cactus.  The spreading growth at the top is attractive, but it is also something like a cancer growing on the plant.

Cholla cactus.  Some of these are referred to as teddy bear cactus.

Organ pipe cactus.  There is a national monument dedicated to this cactus in southwest Arizona.

I love the shape of agave plants.

This barrel cactus has had a baby.

Yellow squash blossoms are pretty.

We also saw how some of the native Americans--Apache and Akimel O'Odham--lived in this hostile environment.

This is one of their corrals, made with desert plants.