The massive moon and the clarity of the stars. Some cities/towns here even encourage their residents to keep the curtains or blinds closed at night, to maintain the purity of the night skies for the astonomers who come from all over the world to view our universe from this auspicious area of our country.
Adorning the road sides, the store and library fronts, and the parking lots, are dollops of lavender forget-me-not bushes. There are bushes (?) of bright orange flowers that spill into a brilliant red at their centers, I still haven't figured out their names, possibly the Arizona Poppy? But when my mom visited she fell in love with them...it's hard not to, they really are everywhere--a favorite of Grace's and mine, too. And there are green trees. All green: the trunk, the branches, and the leaves, that seem to have come straight out of a monochromatic or a French Impressionist painting because of their uniquely singular color and their numerous teeny-tiny leaves that appear curiously fuzzy and blurry when viewed from afar; they are the state trees of Arizona: Palo Verde. And what about those Saguaros? The famous cacti with the arms number in the millions here in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and Mexico. But on a worldly scale, they are actually rare. And besides Arizona, California is the only other state where Saguaros grow (and they only have about a hundred; they're smaller and skinnier). That's right, there are millions here and in Mexico, but there are zero in other states in the surrounding area like Texas, Nevada, and New Mexico!
It's the average rain fall of eight inches per year that allows them to flourish here compared to other deserts around the world that are too dry. Cacti do need some water and Saguaros need more than most because of their size. I could go on and on about the interesting facts I've learned about how the Saguaro thrives here and the details of their life-cylce, but I only have 30 minutes on this computer. (But feel free to ask questions in the comments section if you have any; I'd love to share. I see I have five followers now, thanks Kristen!)
I think most people that are not from this area (and maybe some that are) associate all of the southwestern part of our country with the immediately recognizable silhouette of that sentient Saguaro standing tall, as guardian of its surrounding land. And here, in Arizona, that is exactly what they are: sentinels on the hills and mountains of this beautiful Sonoran Desert land. On the way up to the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago, Grace and I relished in ogling at the prominent personalities of this state. We saw a "Grandpa" with his 10-12 large arms (it takes at least 50 years before they grow their first arm), a "ballerina" with two of her arms raised over her "head", a "mama" bending down slightly with arms curled in toward two smaller Saguaros, and literally thousands more.
The Saguaros, like the Palo Verde and the orange-red flowers and the forget-me-nots are all over town, too. We see them during our daily drives. But to see a "forest" of them, and there are many forests of Saguros surrounding this city once you get away from all the buildings and surface roads, just helps to remind me of how awesomely different Arizona is, for the Saguaros alone, compared to any other US state. And I'm happy to have had the chance to live here, if only for three months of my nearly 40 year life.
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