Botanical Garden, Vienna

One of my favorite parts of my recent trip to Vienna was the free botanical garden, next to the Belvedere Palace and grounds.  Here are a few highlights.  

You can walk into the bamboo grove on boardwalks.  So, apparently, can the bamboo.  

Huge lotus blossoms:

A saguaro and California poppies to make me feel at home.  In German, the saguaro is called "Riesenkaktus." Because my German is soooo great, I looked at the sign and thought, "Travelling Cactus?" Wouldn't that be a more appropriate name for jumping cholla or something?

Turns out I was confusing "riesen" with "reisen." A saguaro is not a traveling cactus, but a giant cactus. Makes more sense but isn't as charming.

An interesting-looking wollemi pine, which was thought to be extinct until a ranger found one in a national park in Australia in 1994!

 

Backpacking Rim to Rim in the Grand Canyon--Day 1--South Rim to Cottonwood Campground

Day 1:  South Rim to Cottonwood Campground, May 12, 2025

A dawn start on the South Kaibab, everything misty blue:  

A very, very, very windy sunrise from Ooh Ahh Point:

The most beautiful part of the trail (especially during this time of day):

For any day-hikers out there who just want a little taste of the canyon, I highly recommend the first bit of the South Kaibab (at sunrise, if possible).  Go at least 10 minutes or so past Ooh Aah Point and you'll see the above section of trail, which is one of my favorites anywhere.  Remember that going back up will take twice as long, and there's no water and practically no shade, so carry enough water and go when it's cool.  

Me at Skeleton Point.  Note the scarf to protect my ears from the continuing and very aggressive winds, the knock-you-off-balance winds.  This was my fifth hike into the Canyon and the only one with this particular weather feature.  Luckily it calmed down a little on the few parts of the South Kaibab where you really don't want to be knocked off balance.    

Well-loved trail:

Me at the fork where normally you can go left on the River Trail and right to Phantom Ranch, but the River Trail is still closed for pipeline work (as is the Bright Angel down from Havasupai Gardens).  The South Kaibab had a lot more traffic on it than usual because of the closures.  People going from the river to the South Rim had two choices.  First option:  Go up the South Kaibab to the Tip-Off and then across the Tonto to Havasupai Gardens, where they could pick up the Bright Angel.  This added significant mileage.  Option two:  Go straight up the South Kaibab (steeper than the Bright Angel, really exposed, and without water).  This unexpected prolonging of the closure didn't affect my itinerary, so I was lucky.      

I met a mule train right about here on my very first trip.  What a cool echo.

After playing in the Colorado, having some lemonade at the Phantom Ranch canteen, writing postcards, and filling up with water, I started through the Box on the North Kaibab:

It was getting pretty warm, so I took every opportunity to get my hat and scarf wet in Bright Angel Creek:

Some of the many colors of prickly pear blossoms I saw on the trail:

And there were so many gorgeous, lush sotol blooms, towering over the rest of the vegetation.  Very cool.

The aggressive wind, however, was dehydrating me even more than the 90+degrees Fahrenheit would normally have, and I ran through my water faster than expected.  I was down to my last quarter cup or so (not as dire as it sounds, because I could have backtracked a bit and found a decent route down to Bright Angel Creek or just pushed through to Cottonwood Campground, less than a mile away, but I was still sooooo happy to find this beauty crossing my path:

I sat down in the shady-ish banks of Wall Creek and filtered about 3 liters of water.  

By the time I got to camp, I was hot and tired and happy.  I felt a little bit like this squirrel:

I relaxed the rest of the day, snoozing in the shade of my campsite, chatting with others by the creek--including a cool thru-hiker who let me pick her brain, wondering whether the wind would die down enough for me to put up my tent, cold-soaking my dinner, and then watching and listening to a bunch of bats who were chowing down on bugs at dusk.  What a lovely, lovely day.

By the way, I finally set up my tent before dark (still in the wind), and even though the ground was so hard I could hardly get my stakes in partway and had to shore some of them up with rocks, my tent did really well.  It flapped noisily, keeping me awake for a while.  But it didn't fall down.  Spoiler:  and it wasn't until the next afternoon that one of the less-secure pegs finally pulled out.  So now I've had my first rainy test (last Grand Canyon trip) and my first windy test (this trip), and the tent's going strong. 

It's the Naturehike Cloud Up 1 (20D nylon variety).  I'm not crazy about some aspects of it.  It's kind of cramped (but what do you expect from a one-person backpacking tent?)  The tunnel design is not as handy for getting in and out as other door designs.  There are rather of a lot of stakes and guy lines, so it's not as quick to set up as it claims unless you have really nice, soft ground (but those stakes and guy lines probably help it take the wind as well as it seems to).  However...for the money, it's the lightest tent I've found, it's just big enough for my needs, it packs down fairly small, it has nice features like reflective strips to keep you from wandering off in the night and losing your tent, and so far it's been good in rain and wind.   So...I would recommend it for budget backpackers or people just testing the waters before they invest big.       

Grand Canyon Teaser

 Soon I'll post all about my rim-to-rim Grand Canyon backpacking trip, but for now, here's a simple picture:

Just a Backyard Flower

 Sorry, I took this picture to test my phone's camera, and I thought it was so pretty I had to share:

Havasupai Gardens--a lush oasis

 I recently read a novel that takes place in the Grand Canyon, where the main character describes Havasupai Gardens (it was called Indian Garden then) as inaccurately named because there was little to no vegetation.  Um...

So, I took this picture in late spring, and it wouldn't be as green at other times of years, but even if you're used to lush places, you can't say this has no vegetation.  Especially considering what most people expect of the Canyon and compared to many other parts of the Canyon.  I don't think the author did any research.    

This is why we like rain in the desert

 Enough said:

We had about three days of slow, gentle, life-giving rain.  This is what the ocotillo are doing with it:  quickly putting on little leaves.  

Pictures taken 1/24/2024 at South Mountain Park in Phoenix, Arizona. 

Cactus Blossom Time!

 From my hike Friday, April 14, 2023, at Skyline Regional park in the Phoenix metro area:

From the end of March at Tucson's Arizona Sonora Desert Museum:

A bee enjoying the poppies

 Okay, I know I post a lot of poppy pictures, but they're just so beautiful.  One hundred percent of bees I saw agreed.  Picture taken early March this year at Sophie's Flat near Wickenburg.

Equity in the Desert

A strange thing about the desert:  some plants leaf out after a good rain.  But apparently not all plants have equal access to the rain.  Here are two ocotillos, one on the right side of the trail and one on the left.  They were close enough to touch at the same time (and I took the two pictures from the same spot).  Amazing.  And you can draw some interesting parallels to our society, no?  

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Book of Answers, by David Wentworth Lazaroff

This is interesting, well written, well-organized, and useful for those living in the Sonoran Desert.  It also has great pictures and useful appendices.  

It is a bit old (1998), so I fear a few of the sections may be slightly misleading because the author was speaking about the habitat destruction and climate change of 25 years ago, and I'm afraid that at least one of those things has sped up.  I would love to see a new edition with just a few small updates, because it's a great book.

4+stars 

Around the World in 80 Plants, by Jonathan Drori

I really enjoyed Around the World in 80 Plants.  I like books structured like this, where each item (plants, in this case) gets a short but interesting treatment, one you can read in just a couple of minutes.  I also like how it was structured as a trip around the world.  Very engaging. 

It was slightly disappointing (and culturally/politically/ecologically/economically enlightening) that so many of the plants featured for a certain country or area were actually invasive species or not-terribly- invasive transplants from other places.

Each section had a good mix of physical description, botanical oddities, and cultural significance.

The writing was good. 

The illustrations were beautiful, but often I found myself wishing for photographs of the most interesting and unfamiliar plants. 

Overall, a great book, recommended for an interested layperson. 

Warning:  the print in the hardback version is quite small. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

World of Wonders, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

I really enjoyed this.  The fascinating animal facts are woven in beautifully with the autobiographical essays.  Some parts get a little too poetic for my personal tastes, but some people will especially love those parts.

Many of the chapters were originally written as standalone essays, so there's a bit of choppiness regarding the differing styles, the timeline of her life, etc., and a bit of repetitiveness here and there, but it worked for me.  A few of the connections between the natural world and the author's life felt like a bit of a stretch, but I enjoyed the book so much I just went with it.      

The drawings are beautiful.

Overall, a delightful surprise that I found on the library shelf, knowing nothing about the book or the author.  I'm glad I picked it up.

More accurate rating:  4.5 

Lightning scar on a Ponderosa Pine

This is one of the best lightning scars I've been able to photograph.  It went round and round the trunk. 

This Ponderosa Pine still seems healthy. What a survivor.

Sacred Datura

Here are some close-ups of the fruit and the not-yet-blooming flower of the sacred datura plant (Datura wrightii).  The flowers are huge and beautiful when they bloom in the afternoon and through the night, attracting their hawkmoth pollinators.  

Be careful:  the plant is poisonous (and/or hallucinogenic) and can be irritating even to the skin.  

I took these pictures between Roosevelt Lake and Young, Arizona.

   

No, Pat, no. Don't sit on that!

In the words of Dr. Seuss (from Hop on Pop):  No, Pat, no.  Don't sit on that!

In case you can't tell, that antelope squirrel has just scampered up an ocotillo--which is a prickly, prickly lookout spot.  But he didn't seem to mind at all.

Sonoran Desert near Wickenburg.

The Magic of the Desert

Here's a video I made of the beautiful Arizona desert and all its unexpected color:

Ironwood and saguaro blossoms

May is time for lovely lavender Ironwood blossoms in the Sonoran Desert.  These were taken on May 13 in the Phoenix areas.  I could hear some of the trees before I saw them, because the bees love the blossoms so much.  The saguaros were also blooming.  A lovely time of year...if it weren't also so hot.  

A close-up of the ironwood flowers

Saguaro blossoms.  Each flower blooms only for night and into the next day.  

You can see where the wash is from all the purple blossoms in a line.  

Bigger trees like ironwoods tend to follow water.  

Here's the wash.  Dry of course.  

Such a lovely, delicate color.  And so very full of bees.  

  

Creosote Gall

Something interesting: This is a creosote gall I found. I didn't know what it was, so I researched. It's an old, dried-up one, but once it was green and leafy. Creosote galls are caused by gall midges from the genus Asphondylia. Midges are little fly-like insects. They lay their eggs and the gall forms around them to provide nutrients for the larvae.

I wondered if the plant formed the gall to keep the hungry larvae in one place. To...shall we say...slow the spread. Something I'm sure none of us have heard anything about recently. But it looks like most galls that form in response to insects are actually controlled by the insects. The larvae inject a chemical which induces the plant to involuntarily form the gall (though some may rely on mechanical damage to induce the growth). So, the little midges restructure their environment to suit them.

The whole process doesn't benefit the creosote bush, but neither does it seem to cause serious harm. Nature is amazing.

Brittlebush Side by Side

Arizona desert plant life is amazing.  For many species, much of its life cycle (leafing out, dropping leaves, flowering, etc) is dependent more on recent rain than on the season or even the temperature.  For example, ocotillo are famous for producing a whole lot of leaves nearly overnight and then dropping them whenever conditions change.  On a single hike you can see ocotillo in all different states of leafiness or nakedness.

Brittlebush (aka brittlebrush) is another one that can look dead in dry spells and then, when temperature and water conditions are right, will suddenly send up shoots and burst into a riot of yellow flowers.  It's more dependent on season than ocotillo, but individual plants vary so widely as to when (or if) they bloom that you can mistake them for different species entirely.

Here's a drastic example.  These two brittlebush plants were next to each other, maybe a foot or two separating their edges.  But one must have had access to better water runoff or something.  Look at the difference:

Pictures taken April 14, 2018 at Peoria Westwing Mountain Preserve