Hot Stuff on Display

Mild, Medium, or HOT!

Mild, Medium, or HOT!

Pick your pepper.

We were near a local hangout that offers a Tex-Mex weekend brunch, so we headed to Texx Tubb’s Taco Palace on Atwood Avenue after an early morning photo shoot. The food was fine, a Mexican omelette filled with cheese and peppers, but I was more interested in photographing the place.

After the manager gave me the OK to shoot whatever I wanted, I wandered around. Tabasco bottles, vintage metal water pitchers, hub caps on the wall rimmed with Christmas lights, a neon yellow refrigerated case for beverages, and an entrance decorated with photo strips, vintage 1960s Kresge’s.

Lots of fun on a full stomach!

Fuzzy Ficus

Fuzzy New Growth on PLant

Fuzzy New Growth on PLant

A first glance, it appears that these ficus leaves have encountered a cold weather frost. Not so. This ficus plant grows in the Bolz Conservatory, the glass greenhouse that keeps the tropics alive in a tiny part of wintry Madison. And the white is the fuzziness of its new growth.

Turquoise Watering Can

Through the Window

Through the Window

Office window, downtown Tucson. Lots of plants in a sunny window, and a turquoise watering can.

Copper Dome

Arizona Capitol Museum

Arizona Capitol Museum

Built in 1900 as Arizona’s State Capitol Building, it was replaced by rather typical office buildings for the legislature in 1960. Now it has been restored and is used as a museum, mostly for the state’s school children. Exhibits are quite basic and focus on the history and culture of Arizona from its early days to the present, Arizona’s symbols, natural history, the story of Arizona’s statehood, and a display about the USS Arizona.

Organ Pipe Cactus

Sonoran Desert

in the Sonoran Desert

The Organ Pipe Cactus is one of the giant cacti, second in size only to the more iconic Saguaro. Instead of having a single trunk with branches, the organ pipe has 6 to 20 stems all growing from a central trunk. It will typically grow about 15 feet tall, though specimens have measured more than 20 feet in height.

Its habitat is limited to Sonora and Baja California, Mexico, and southwestern Arizona. In the United States, the largest number are found in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument located near the Mexico/Arizona border.