Various randomness and other miscellanea

We've done a few things and taken a few pictures recently that I wanted to share.

First, about a month ago, we went to the Tres Rios Nature Festival in South Avondale. It's an annual festival on the Gila River celebrating the river, the wilderness around the area and other things natural. A lot of the rivers in Arizona don't have water in them usually, but this part of the Gila does. So we took a canoe out for a little trip:




















We also took another trip to to Desert Botanical Gardens to see all the flowers blooming:



















That same day we visited the Desert Botanical Gardens, we went to Moon Valley Nursery and bought a new tree for our backyard. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome the newest addition to our family, Dusty, a 36" box Palo Brea. Yes, for some reason I really can't explain, we name our trees. Dusty got his name because the first time the cats went out after he was delivered, Moe turned a distinct shade of brown from all the dust that was kicked up when the guys from the nursery were digging the hole.










By the way, turning brown is pretty tough for a black cat, but somehow Moe was able to do it. We don't have pictures of that.

But we do have a picture of both cats enjoying the patio furniture my parents bought us for Christmas last year.

Poppies! Poppies!

Because of all the rain we had this winter, the wildflowers are spectacular this year. We went hiking at Lost Dutchman State Park this past weekend which is famous for its Mexican poppies. The park is at the entrance of the Tonto National Forest and is at the base of the Superstition Mountains, all the way at the far east end of the valley. It was crowded but beautiful.

New Patio

Back in September, Katie and I started working on our new patio. We dug a 20' by 15' hole next to our existing patio, expecting that we'd be able to get the new patio built by Thanksgiving. It took us a few weeks to get the hole dug and flat, and then in late October, we had all the materials delivered for the patio. At that point, it hadn't rained in about six months, and the backyard was totally dry.

It rained a little the day we had the materials delivered. It turns out that it takes about two weeks for our backyard to dry out enough to do any work back there. We know this because, from the day we had the materials delivered in October to early February it rained about every two weeks. So we didn't get to do any more work on it for about three and a half months.

We finally got to start working on it again, and it hasn't rained since, so we finally got it finished this morning. We're pretty excited about it. We can finally have a nice place to eat and hang out outside. We've got a lot of other plans for the backyard that we'll work on over the next few years, but getting the patio done is a huge accomplishment. It was a lot of hard work, but it's going to be worth it.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the patio. See if you can pick out the homage to my heritage.











And here are some pictures of the patio with the nice patio furniture my parents bought us for Christmas.