Good Memories

We returned to Iowa yesterday after spending all of early March in Arizona with our very good friends, Dick and Rina. Before we left, I squeezed in a sixth and final baseball game between the Brewers and Dodgers, which the Dodgers won. The Dodgers look good, and son Rob will likely be pleased about that for the upcoming regular season.

I took a few shots of things in the back yard of the house we rented–things we don't see back home or that we don't see this time of year. The citrus fruit was so good. I made lemonade twice, and the tangelos were so juicy you could hardly avoid it dripping from your chin.

A rose bush was blooming just as we ended our time there–Rina said it was actually a second round of spring blooms.

We enjoyed our time there so much that we have all decided to try renting the same place in 2017. More spring training baseball and more time with good friends–what can be better than that?

Sonoran Preserve

Yesterday, we went out to Scottsdale's McDowell Sonoran Preserve hoping that we might get to see desert flowers beginning to bloom. We were probably a month early, though we did see a few flowers. Nevertheless, the desert is very beautiful, and we got some nice walking time on the many trails in the preserve.

I know I've said it in other postings, but one simply cannot avoid being struck by the magnificence of the saguaro cactus plants. They were everywhere in the preserve, and if you read the sign I photographed, you will note that they can be very old. The one here might well be 150 years old or so (just a guess--they can be up to 200 years old, and at 10 years they are barely bigger than your thumb).

Here is the inside of one that failed to survive. They have a woody interior to help hold their mass. The sign said they weigh 80 pounds per foot.

Yucca plants were blooming, and we saw a number of other interesting trees, shrubs, and landscapes.  Were I here long enough, I'd definitely be looking for a guide of some kind to help me learn more about the different plants. Hope you enjoy a taste of the desert via the photos below.

Books, Baseball, and the Barrio Queen

For my fellow book lovers, here is another recommendation. We have enjoyed quite a bit of quiet time in the back yard of the house we are renting while reading books and maybe having some yummy guacamole, cheese, crackers, and maybe a quaff or two. The book I most recently read is pictured below, and I very much enjoyed it. When I am not reading novels, I like history, science, and biography topics. Proof covered the science of booze in an interesting and fully scientific way. The chapters progress through topics in a sequence covering roughly the life an alcoholic beverage: yeast, sugar, fermentation, distillation, aging, smell and taste, body and brain, and hangover. (I sincerely hope the last of these is not always a part of the life of a beverage in your particular case, however!) Both entertaining and educational, it is well worth a read.

On Thursday, I attended another game, this time by myself. I got to see another of the several ball parks that host teams in the Cactus League, this one called Salt River Fields, plural because in addition to the main park, there are several additional fields in the complex that must be used for local youth baseball, recreational games, and practice.

I saw the Reds play the Rockies, and I was able to get a single seat in a nearly perfect location behind home plate. The Rockies let the game slip away by the score of 5 to 3.

Friday evening, we ate at an excellent southwestern style restaurant called the Barrio Queen. Part of the occasion was to allow a former work colleague of Kathie's to join us. Jean moved here from Iowa City last June and is adapting well to Arizona life. They enjoyed catching up with each other, and the rest of us enjoyed meeting her. Jean's daughter lives here, and just by random chance, Dick, Rina, Kathie and I had run into her here several years ago when we were at an Iowa-connected bar watching a bowl game between Iowa and Georgia Tech. I looked it up, and in fact, that was in 2010. I blogged about our time in Arizona with Dick and Rina then and included a photo of Kathie with Jean's daughter. You can find that blog entry here, if you really want to go back and see it.

Yesterday, we attended another Cubs game. They played the same Reds I had seen at Salt River Fields the day before. The Cubs succeeded in beating the Reds, though. Before the game started, we enjoyed Clark, the Cubs' mascot, as he clowned around near our seats along the line in right field. Good place to catch a foul ball, though we were unlucky in that department.

No W Flag

Kathie and I attended our third spring training game yesterday, this time with Dick and Rina. The Cubs' home in Mesa has lots of nods to Wrigley Field, including this sign, which we of course needed as a backdrop for a photo.

At all of the spring training parks, the concessions feature items that one might find back home at the club's regular season park. Dick found an enormous hot dog, one that was surely a foot long, that was covered with all kinds of condiments, and which may have approached $1 per inch in cost.

It was a fun game to watch, even though the Cubs lost to the Dodgers by a score of 7 to 3.

By the way, if you read my prior posting, you will recall that we heard Wayne Messmer sing with the jazz group on Monday night. We arrived at the game just in time yesterday to hear him belt out the National Anthem, which, as I said, he frequently does back in Chicago.

A Special Visit and A Special Dinner

Yesterday, we were privileged to visit a long-time friend of Kathie's parents who lives here in the greater Phoenix metropolitan region. His name is Neal, and he is 102 years old. We have visited him each time we have come to this area. Neal was a vegetable buyer for Campbell soups and V8 juices prior to his retirement. He was waiting for us when we arrived and immediately wanted to launch into a witty exchange of family updates and other stories. We had invited him to have lunch with us, and he insisted on driving us in his almost new Toyota Camry to a Village Inn nearby. Neal is a very sharp guy with lots of fun information and stories to share. When he first retired to this area, he bought a beautiful palomino (think of Roy Rogers' Trigger) and enjoyed that horse for about 15 years, winning awards and loving rides in the desert. We saw several photographs. Neal and his horse were even part of a sheriff's posse, a neighborhood watch group, for a long time.

In the evening, our hosts, Dick and Rina, took us to a fun Thai restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale.

One of the Monday attractions at this restaurant was a jazz duo comprising the talents of Judy Roberts, a Chicago area performer who spends time here each year, and Renee Patrick, a local area vocalist. They were great and sang lots of old standards.

At one point, Judy introduced Wayne Messmer, another Chicago personality, who joined her in singing a couple of great tunes. If you have tuned into or attended any Chicago Cubs games, you may have heard Wayne perform the National Anthem or as the Cubs' public address announcer, though I think he doesn't do the latter these days. We actually heard him last Friday at the Cubs game we attended, and that may happen again today, as we have tickets to the Dodgers versus Cubs game this afternoon.

Scottsdale's Museum of the West

Yesterday, we visited this museum, which opened just a year ago or so.

Much of the museum's collection is art work, and as one who loves western art, I thoroughly enjoyed it. You can visit the museum's web site by clicking here. One of the current exhibits is entitled Inspirational Journey: The Story of Lewis and Clark Featuring the Artwork of Charles Fitz. Over 100 of the artist's paintings are displayed in order of their depictions of the events over the course of the Lewis and Clark exploration of the Missouri River and points further northwest in our country. For those of us from Iowa, this painting, which shows a burial procession for Sergeant  Charles Floyd, might be especially meaningful. Floyd was the only person who died during the expedition, and that happened near Sioux City. The Sergeant Floyd Monument sits high above the Missouri River south of the town.

Numerous other western artists have work on exhibit in the museum.

Many are paintings and sculptures.

There is also a fine collection of tack, rodeo memorabilia, western entertainment artifacts, and, of course, old firearms and related holsters, scabbards, and other accessories.

One of my favorite paintings was this one by Bev Doolittle, entitled Unknown Presence. The artist has some information about the painting here.

More Baseball and Lots of Porsches

On Friday, Travis, Kathie and I saw our second baseball game. This time it was the Angels versus the Cubs, and the Cubs won 3-0. Here we are waiting to enter the park.

Whereas maybe 4,000 fans were at the White Sox versus Dodgers game at Camelback Farm stadium on Thursday, the Cubs park in Mesa was sold out, even setting a record with over 15,400 fans in attendance. It was another beautiful day. We'll be heading back for a couple more games there this next week with Dick and Rina.

This morning, I joined Dick in a breakfast meeting of devotees of old Porsches, mostly 356 models. Here is Dick with his beloved Ruby, a 356C. Riding in her is quite an experience.

Lots of mostly seventy-something guys and gals gathered to swap stories while walking around admiring each others' cars. I really enjoyed meeting many of them, learning a bit of the history of these cars, and seeing how beautiful and well cared for they were.

Being someone who loves green, I especially liked this one.

And this one also, in a blue-green color. There were lots of proud owners walking about! This region of the country is a haven for car collectors, because the very low humidity and absence of salt means that cars will last a long time.

Scottsdale

We have been in Scottsdale, AZ for the past five days with our friends, Rina and Dick. They usually spend January and February down here, and we have visited them for a week at a time in other years. This year, we suggested extending into March and splitting the extra cost with them. One of the motivations was that March is spring training month for Major League Baseball.

On our first day, we went to a park for some exercise, dog walking (Rina and Dick's beloved Daisy is with them), and exploration of a xeriscape demonstration garden (i.e., how to use and conserve water in desert garden landscapes).

More flowers are in bloom than we have seen in past visits. I love seeing the cacti, especially the big saguaro.

There are so many pretty birds around too, and many are making beautiful music. I hope you can hear some of it in this video that I made.

 Travis flew down from Colorado to be with us for a couple days. We went to the Cornish Pasty Company for dinner the first evening and started with some Guinness on tap!

Kathie was a bit overwhelmed by the extensive menu.

Each of us chose a pasty filled with whatever sounded best to us. Dick knew all about pastys as a favorite food of miners who carried them down into the mines each day.

I couldn't resist ordering a dessert resembling a banana cream pie, which we all shared along with another that consisted of ice cream with a caramel/chocolate sauce.

Speaking of baseball, Kathie, Travis and I attended a Dodgers versus White Sox matchup on Thursday. I'll eventually see six games while we are here. Spring training, as you may know, is a big deal out here. Each team in the Cactus League has a ball park somewhere around the Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Glendale, Mesa, and other cities metropolitan area. The teams we saw on Thursday utilize a park called Camelback Ranch in the northwest part of the region. I'll give this ball park an extra plus for using the correct song in the seventh inning stretch–that is "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" not "God Bless America." However, they lost points for choosing a singer whose version of the National Anthem was sung much, much, much, much too slowly. (I'm a little tired of singers who want to try to outclass everyone else with their personal embellishments of the anthem. Lady Gaga did a particularly nice job for the Super Bowl, by the way. But, I digress.)

For my money, there is little that can beat the game of baseball (my favorite sport) along with sunshine, pretty green fields with manicured infields, hot dogs, peanuts, Cracker Jack, beer, and the opportunity to spend easy-going time with favorite friends and family. Travis loves baseball too, and I always enjoy the chance to experience games with him.

I kept hearing some raucous sounds behind us. When I turned around and aimed my camera in that direction, these fun-loving Dodgers fans posed for me. Lots and lots of people come to the area for some or all of the month of March to enjoy their favorite teams.

The Dodgers won the game 6 to 1, unfortunately for Travis, who has always loved the Chicago White Sox. But, it was a good day! More baseball to follow!