Odds and Ends

Greetings Gentle Readers!  It's the first day of a new month, and apparently it's opening day of allergy season for me.  The steeenking yellow bushes are in full bloom.  When riding one's bike down the Santa Cruz River Trail, the scent is almost over powering.

There is a large paving project on Starr Pass and La Cholla.  Here you can see La Cholla (taken from a moving vehicle).  Notice that the lane on the left has been taken down to dirt.  These roads needed paving in the worst way.  There are giant pot holes, and the road is littered with lumps of asphalt.  It's a good thing, but it's forcing all of the traffic on to Ajo.  Many people would bail off Ajo and use La Cholla.  Now they're all on Ajo and Mission and the backups literally go for miles.  To avoid this, we've been taking the scenic route over Gates Pass.

Isn't this lovely?  The low sun really lights up the desert.

Yesterday we rode the bikes up the Santa Cruz River trail.  The Round Tailed ground squirrels were out and feisty.  Some members of the tribe were standing in the middle of the trail, we'd approach them and they'd run off at the last minute.  They remind me of meerkats.

This is the new Caterpillar mining division headquarters.  They are due to open any day now.

This is our gate.  We had Alfred Jr. of Chavez Wrought Iron come out to see what it would take to raise it three inches to accommodate driveway work.  He identified this as an old gate made by a man named Muscat.  He was an accomplished blacksmith, one of those guys who could make anything.  I feel kind of bad about doing this, it's like cutting down a piece of art work so it fits over your mantle.

To the right of the gate which makes a tremendous mount of noise when it's opened and closed is a Queen Palm.  Notice the black arrow which is pointing at a blob.

It's a hummingbird nest.  She came by today with a piece of bird down in her beak, but she wouldn't put it in the nest because we were there.

One of their building materials is spider webs.  They use them to stick things together.  It's a tiny little nest.  I wish she had not built it there, it's not a good location, too many people and too much noise.

Speaking of noise.  There have been several occurrences of a weird, unexplained noise in the area.  It makes the front door rattle, there is a pretty good over pressure.  It goes on for seconds.  We had one today at 11:24 am.  It's not known what's causing them.  I find it amazing, with all of the technology at the University of Arizona that this is not known.  What is known is what it is not:  a sonic boom, earthquake, or mine blasting operations.  I've linked to an article from one of the local news stations, it includes a video that caught the sound.  Hopefully it will play for you, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

The weather here finally improved, it was almost 80 today.