Bloomin' Arizona!

Spring is one of my favorite times in Arizona. Winter has left us (sort of) and the daytime temperatures are between 65 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit. I know other places around the world get to look forward to daffodils and tulips blooming but we get to look forward to wildflower season. Our deserts are quite beautiful (especially this time of year) and are the most biologically diverse deserts in the world.

Depending upon a great many things, such as how much and when the rain falls, sunlight, frost conditions and quite a few other things that we are not even sure about, the wildflowers will bloom. Some years the desert is empty with only a few blooms here and there. Other years there are spots where the ground is carpeted with orange, purple and pink. You can often find wildflowers near Saguaro National Park east or west of Tucson, near Picacho Peak north of Tucson, sometimes around the Superstition Mountains east of Mesa, or just sometimes along the road like Silverbell Rd. in Tucson.

I am going to show some wildflowers that were blooming right outside our house last week.

 

Here is my daughter taking pictures of flowers as well.

First is the most famous of our wildflowers, although it has a neighbors name cause it blooms there too. The California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica ssp. mexicana) is a beautiful delicate orange flower.

Next is the Desert Marigold (Baileya multiradiata):

Penstemon parryi – Parry's Beardtongue

Fiveneedle Pricklyleaf (Thymophylla pentachaeta)

And lastly, Phacelia crenulata – Cleftleaf Wildheliotrope – It's so darn cute!

I should say that I got all of my wildflower information from fireflyforest.net, a really nice website for Plants and Wildlife of Arizona, Hawaii, and Costa Rica. Also, if you haven't guessed, I am not a professional photographer and those flowers are not at their bloomiest. But, that means what you see will look more like this than what the perfect flower on the perfect day with the perfect light looks like.

All these blooms also mean its allergy season, which is not fun. When the citrus or the Palo Verde trees start to bloom, I start to sneeze. I am glad in a way that I am sneezing from our lemon tree. Last year we had such a bad frost that the lemon tree did not produce any lemons for this year. We actually had to buy lemons! I then juiced them and froze the juice cubes so we can use the lemon juice all year round.

If you do not make it to see the wildflowers this year, in May and June you can see our Saguaro's bloom a beautiful white flower that attracts bats at night.

I know this is a different blog for me but I really wanted to share the beauty of the Arizona desert!

Chronicles of Idiocy 4: Rushed Idiocy

It is incredibly rude to call anyone a “slut”. It implies that you have personal knowledge of this persons nighttime activities. I am not saying I think Rush Limbaugh and Sandra Fluke had a relationship or have even met. He just took the opportunity to be controversial to say that Ms. Fluke, who testified before a Democratic hearing headed by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, is a “slut” for asking that Contraception be covered completely by health insurance. In doing so, he not only greatly defamed Ms. Fluke, but he insulted everyone's intelligence by reducing a medicine to only one of it's intended results.

Contraception or Birth Control Pills not only prevent conception, they also regulate the entire cycle of a woman's (and girl's) menstruation. Sometimes these cycles can be extremely rough. Sometimes conditions like endrometriosis can make a period unbearable. These BCP's help regulate the cycle and make things bearable. Yet Mr. Limbaugh thinks that any unmarried female who takes them must be a “slut”. Would you like to see the nighttime activities of a 14 year-old girl who takes BCP's for endrometriosis, Mr. Limbaugh? We all know what that makes you. And Ms. Fluke, who Mr. Limbaugh says is a “slut” takes BCP's to prevent ovarian cysts which cause bleeding and pain. How would you treat that if it happened to your daughter, Mr. Limbaugh?

This is an assumption, but if males stayed mentally “male” and yet could biologically have children like females do, things would be different. I bet that BCP's would not only be over-the-counter and cheap, but would possibly be in the food or water supply, like Fluorine. It would be formulated that you would have to take a medicine to become pregnant, not the reverse. It would be a strange, new, and less populated world.

Rush Limbaugh is a blowhard and an idiot. He and his lot love to say outrageous things and then “get surprised” when others are outraged at their comments. It is their Lord of the Ring's Gollum-like “precious”. Every now and then they need a little refuel on the outrage to get their fix.

One of my family members posted on Facebook that Mr. Limbaugh was a misogynistic pig. Yes, and we all knew this 15 years ago as well. The one thing that he needs is an audience. If no one listens to him, he will stop talking. Outrage will then become like oxygen to him. Stop listening, and his supply will be cut off. Oh, I know he will fight this by saying even more outlandish and offensive things. Next thing we will know he will say that all Lesbians should be “confined” to the island of Lesbos. Or that President Obama was actually born on Mars and is not even an Earthling, let alone an American! We have to look away, we have to stop listening to his ilk or suffer the consequences of this stupid and obnoxious publicity stunt, um, I mean national debate.

March Fourth/Forth to the Tucson Festival of Books!

My blog is a day early because today is National Grammar Day, March fourth. In addition to that, next weekend will be the Tucson Festival of Books at the University of Arizona mall. To top it off, it is spring in Arizona, our wildflowers are blooming! Life is good.

National Grammar Day is always on March 4^th. You can check out some Grammar Day activities at http://nationalgrammarday.com/ There are all sorts of activities (including contests) to celebrate grammar. From that website I have copied (yes, outright copied) the 2011 Haiku contest winner.

I love it!

2011 Winner - Haiku

Spell-checkers won't catch
You're mistaken homophones
Scattered hear and their

-- Gord Roberts

I would love to say that I am a wonderful grammar devotee, but alas, I am not. Perfect grammar and language usage is a goal not an absolute, since there will be times when ending the sentence in a preposition is the right thing to do. Especially if you are writing for a character who could care less about grammar – then sky's the limit! Still, there is the plot and most of the other characters out there for which correct grammar in writing is necessary and English is a rather goofy language. So let's celebrate tools which allow us to communicate with each other understandably. Because as we have seen with texting, it can be chaos.

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Now we can march forth to the Tucson Festival of Books on March 10-11. I know I will be there! For more information here is their website: http://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/ where you can find out abut author signings, exhibitors, symposiums, workshops, and UA Science City with lots of cool stuff for the kiddos. If you really want to go to one of the signings or workshops – come early. There was rarely an empty seat at the start of any of these programs.

Many authors will be there including southern Arizona local J.A. Jance, Dr. Andre Weil, and Elmore Leonard. I am looking forward to meeting up and coming suspense author A.J. Scudiere. I am hoping to learn more than a few tricks of the book marketing trade but I will also probably end up with more than a few books.

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With that new knowledge and with April Fools Day coming up, now is a good time to ramp up my book marketing. I am very happy to announce that paperbacks of “The Chronicles of IDIOT” will be available at Mostly Books and Antigone Books. I am hoping they will have a copies available at their booths at TFOB.

Also, starting on April Fools to April 5th, Great Minds Think Aloud Literary Community will be running a contest for “The Chronicles of IDIOT,” giving away 10 digital copies and 5 paperbacks! On April 4^th GMTA will be posting and interview with little old me – I am so nervous! If you are not familiar with GMTA, you must not have seen their 5 star review of “The Chronicles of IDIOT”. Please check it out! They are a wonderful society dedicated to helping out independent authors. There will be more to come for my marketing mini-blitz. Any suggestions for someone who is still trying to get her book out there?