Here’s the finished project, the end result of many weeks of harvesting and drying the mesquite beans from my front-yard tree… Thank you, Desert Harvesters, for doing the milling, and to Patty Goble for transporting me and beans to this event. This is what we came back to my place with… The raw materials? Three…
To think that, when I first attended the Swap Meet 25 years ago, it was a monthly bicycle club meeting held in a University of Arizona auditorium. I doubt that more than 100 club members attended. And now look. It attracts thousands of people, who fill several city blocks. There also is a still life…
So, here’s my back porch, all ready to receive hordes of Watershed Management Group Home-Scape Tourists… For the first hour of the tour, things were slow. Then I got slammed with visitors. About 50 in two and a half hours. No time for photos once I got busy, but here’s the set from last year.
September 2015 update: The website has been redesigned since this post was published. A year ago, the principals of this startup company came to me for a website redesign. That project is summarized here. Since then, the MetProf people have gotten feedback from their customers, which has led them to focus the business on proteomic…
A solo exhibition of images by Martha Retallick Borderlands Brewing Company 119 East Toole Avenue Tucson, Arizona 85701 October 12 through November 9, 2013 Tucson, AZ – September 19, 2013 – Meet Martha Retallick. She’s short of stature, slight of build, and doesn’t have an athletic bone in her body. But this tiny Tucsonan has…
On Wednesday, September 4, the University of Arizona, Tech Launch Arizona, and Startup Tucson hosted a breakfast meeting with U.S. Rep. Ron Barber. The meeting covered a wide range of topics, including capital availability for undergraduate entrepreneurs, UA-community cooperation on technology transfer that creates high-paying jobs, and pending federal legislation to aid innovative small businesses…
The brief story of sunshine and water in Tucson goes like this: Sunshine: Way too much! Water: Not enough! Ultra-bright midday sun is turning my cabeza temporal squash plants into a bunch of swooning drama queens… Save those plants! Must have emergency infusion of greywater! To the kitchen we must go! It’s garden-bucket-water time! The…
So far, August’s monsoon storms have been quite impressive. A total of .55″ to date. More than half of the rain came during last Friday’s sudden downpour. Here are the results from my neighborhood, starting with the street flooding at 3rd Avenue and Flores Drive… The downpour was preceded by a windstorm, which pushed this…
Okay, so I finally found a great way to wash and dry large quantities of mesquite pods: Put them in that used produce crate that’s been sitting in my shed. Set them atop one of my gardens. That feral cat-deterring thorny branch lattice makes a perfect “table.” Watering can rinses the pods and waters the…
February 2022 update: The website has been redesigned since this post was published. This blog exists to drive traffic to the Tucson-based American Journal of Medicine. It’s managed by a longtime friend and mentor, Pamela Powers Hannley. The AJM blog started out on Blogger, but Pamela and the journal’s editorial board decided that it needed…
A month ago, I blogged about the start of the mesquite bean harvest at my place. Around Tucson, you’ll also hear those beans referred to as pods. This post is about my adventures as a pod farmer. The harvest started slowly, but let me tell you, my front yard is now under full bombardment. That…
Well, look what’s back in town! Looks like big drops of water, falling from the sky! Alas, this was one of those five-minute wonderstorms. We’ve had more convincing ones, but no gullywashers. Yet. This is the time of year with the night-blooming cereus present their annual flower show. They’re supposed to do this for just…
News Flash: It’s hot and dry here in Tucson, Arizona. We’re eagerly anticipating the start of the monsoon rains. In the meantime, my container garden appears to be holding up… I give the container garden at least one watering a day. The cactii? Well, they could use a drink… What happens to sagging cactus branches?…
Nature has a funny way of demanding your attention. It can send huge storms. Or it can do more subtle things, like dropping mesquite beans in the front yard. Okay, big front yard mesquite tree, you have my attention. It’s time for the annual mesquite bean harvest. Which starts with picking up the fallen beans,…
For the fourth year in a row, I was the official photographer for the Tucson Folk Festival. Held during the first weekend of May, the Folk Festival featured more than 500 musicians from Arizona, the Southwest, and beyond. View my best 2013 Tucson Folk Festival photos.
Jim Hannley is a Tucson, Arizona-based financial planner who feels the need, the need for speed. When he wants to update his website, he wants to do it NOW. Working on his old website was a convoluted process that involved downloading web page files, editing them with a word processor, then uploading the edited pages back…
Dinner Plate Buds? What kind of a headline is that? Are strange things happening in my kitchen? The kitchen report: Nothing is amiss. The venue for this post is my back yard, where my dinner plate cacti are doing their normal spring thing and budding. Oh, are they ever…
May 2015 update: This website is no longer online. No doubt about it, Arizona is in a long-term drought. The University of Arizona’s DroughtWatch project draws on the input of people who observe the effects of dry climate in their locales. Here’s what the site looked like before my redesign: The new look worked the physical…
Ahhh, April in Tucson. Time once again for our city’s annual Bike Fest. Which motivates Yours Truly to go on bike-tographic expeditions to all sorts of cool events. Let’s start with Cyclovia Tucson. Did you know that there are two them this month? The first was on Sunday, April 7. Believe me, getting a photo…
It was around this time last year when I was calling my mesquite tree a slacker. Thing was taking its sweet old time about blooming. Not this year. That tree’s well into ultra-green mode. Fully bloomed in less than a week. After a winter of looking at leaves falling to the ground and the branches…
Spring has come to my front yard in a big way. Cue up the flowers, starting with the potted aloe vera… Just to the west of the aloe is another front yard flower-fest. This is bellflower beardtongue penstemon… Pretty yellow flowers. But the name for this one? Dogweed. That’s right. Dogweed. I think it’s time…