Intersection Logs

It broke 100 degrees in Tucson today, for the first time this year. Classes are over, and the campus was eerily quiet. The landscapers whipped out the wilted pansies around the building where I work, and replaced them with zinnias, which are somewhat more summer-proof. On my way home, I was chatting with a security guard who had stopped to admire the new flowers, and mentioned that I grew up in England. So, as one does, she asked me if I'd ever seen the Queen.

As it happens, I have. Twice. After all, it's a fairly small country, and being seen is in a sense her job, so the odds against it aren't that high.

The first time was on purpose, ( and it happened on this wise. )

The second time, almost twenty years later, was more or less by accident, ( and this was the manner of it. )

I've been looking at and printing photos this evening -- my own, and my father's. Here are a couple of side-by-side comparisons of similar shots taken with different cameras.

( Landscape )

( Cactus Flower )

My US colleagues have been commenting on the paucity of drinking fountains around here, which I hadn't even thought about.

It isn't that the water isn't safe. (Though I grew up with the notion that public drinking fountains, the few that existed, were unsanitary.) It isn't that buying bottled water is an entrenched part of the culture, though it's becoming more common.

It's just that casual public consumption of plain water isn't part of the culture -- and in the mild climate, it isn't a huge health issue. The British will consume hot tea and coffee at every opportunity, for sociability and warmth as well as thirst, but water? Newfangled American habit, almost as bad as excessively-iced soft drinks. My mother and I carry thermos flasks of hot coffee when we go hiking.

The weather has been iffy, but not too bad. Yesterday we went into town, to see the new stainless-steel-ball fountains outside the Winter Gardens, and other things in the rather pleasant vicinity of the Town Hall, and then to the Botanical Gardens. The rhododendrons were in bloom all over, pink and purple and red and white. There were also golden azaleas, and pink-tinged magnolias, and a dove tree with huge dangling white bracts that we never remember noticing before, though it had obviously been around for a while. Also squirrels, and pigeons, and a flower on the banana tree in the glasshouses.

Today we went to Graves Park, where there were more rhododendrons, and an adorable Highland calf, and baby coots swimming to their mothers to be fed, and four little ducklings. The bluebells in the woods were a bit past their best and would have looked better with a bit of sunlight, but they were there, as were masses of starry white wild garlic, all under fresh green leaves.

I have, of course, taken many photographs. The calf was downright flirting with the camera, and a lamb with panda patches on its nose and eyes thrust its head right through the fence.