Dilemma

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Dilemma: Beat the human and prove your obvious superiority, or let him win and get fed.

Baby Hummingbirds

 

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Wildflowers Standing Tall

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Prepare for poppies. Start looking for lupines. Find a field of phacelias.
The desert is bursting into bloom this week - thanks in large part to the soaking rains of January and recent warm weather.
"It's magical. In some places out there, the hills are glowing gold with poppies," raves Russ Buhrow, curator of plants at Tohono Chul Park.
"And I've seen all kinds of other blooms," Buhrow says. "I think this is going to be the best wildflower year since 1998, which was unbelievable."
Practically every canyon or expanse of desert around Tucson will show some wildflower color in the next couple of weeks. source

Lack of Water Keeps Wild Pigs from being State Menace

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They root, wallow and eat everything from seeds to snakes and lambs.
They're wild pigs, and the only thing keeping Arizona from being overrun by them are our vast stretches of bone-dry desert.
Two spots in Southern Arizona are known to have populations of wild pigs - not javelinas but domestic swine that have escaped or been released and taken to living in the wild.
One of the places is northeast of Tucson in the San Pedro River valley near Redington, said David Bergman of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's wildlife services division in Phoenix. The other Southern Arizona spot is near Bowie and Willcox in northern Cochise County. In the past, there also was a population of wild pigs in and around the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Tucson.
Rancher Jim Dykes who lives in the San Pedro Valley said he's had run-ins with "big, black, Russian boar-looking things" in his yard as recently as three weeks ago.
But his biggest conflicts with the hogs came in the fall of 2008. An irrigation pipe was repeatedly broken during the night, and the animals left huge tracks, he said. So Dykes set up a motion-sensing camera and quickly captured pictures of mobs of pigs marauding in his yard.

Eventually, Dykes shot one of the pigs, and when he tracked it behind a workshop, another 15 or 20 were there looking at him. read more

Buy, Buy American Pie

2nd Annual Tucson Festival of Books

The second annual Tucson Festival of Books is back on the University of Arizona campus Saturday and next Sunday.
The festival is expected to draw in excess of 50,000 people and include more than 400 notable writers whose work covers a host of genres and styles.
There will be activities and entertainment for the entire family. Admission and parking are free.

Who's back: Authors make the festival, and we are thrilled to have a large number of returning authors including Elmore Leonard ("Road Dogs"), J.A. Jance ("Trial By Fire"), Luis Alberto Urrea ("Into the Beautiful North"), Nancy Turner ("These is my Words"), Charles de Lint ("Eyes Like Leaves"), Jennifer Lee Carrell ("Interred With Their Bones"), Jay Dobyns ("No Angel") and Michael Blake ("Dances With Wolves").

Who's new: Some of the new faces are Larry McMurtry ("Rhino Ranch"), Diana Ossana ("Brokeback Mountain"), Scott Simon ("Windy City"), Alice Hoffman ("The Story Sisters"), Phillip Margolin ("Supreme Justice"), Terry Brooks ("A Princess of Landover"), Robert Crais ("The First Rule"), Curtis Sittenfeld ("American Wife"), Frank Beddor ("The Looking Glass Wars"), Tony Zinni ("The Battle for Peace"), Jon Scieszka ("Robot Zot"), David Morrell ("First Blood"), Baxter Black ("The Back Page"), Jamie Ford ("Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet"), Chris O'Dell ("Miss O'Dell"), Doug Stanton ("Horse Soldiers"), Mary Pipher ("Reviving Ophelia") and Christopher Reich ("Rules of Vengeance"). read more

Tohono Chul Park's 25th Anniversary

Tohono Chul Park's 25th anniversary is April 19, but its Silver Spring Celebration will be held about three weeks earlier, on March 28.
That's when the northwest-side gem's new Sonoran Seasons Garden, a $500,000 project, will be dedicated by Richard Wilson, who founded the park with his wife, Jean, 25 years ago. Jean Wilson died in October.

 

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The concept behind the garden, designed by Scottsdale architect John Douglas, is to section off plants from the desert's five seasons - spring, dry summer, monsoon summer, fall and winter - so visitors can see what's in bloom throughout the year.
"This Sonoran Desert is totally different than every other desert in the world," said Bud Watson, one of the park's many docents. "It's because we have two rainy seasons." read more and see more pics 
For anyone who can't make it to the Silver Spring Celebration, the park is also celebrating its anniversary on April 19 by waiving admission fees, and a special 25th anniversary T-shirt will be sold in the park's gift shops.

Fox’s new family comedy “Sons of Tucson”

 

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On the series, which begins March 14, Mr. Labine plays Ron Snuffkin, a luckless do-nothing living in his car and struggling to get by on the salary of a sales clerk at a sporting goods store — until he is approached by the Gunderson brothers, ages 8, 11 and 13. Their father is serving white-collar time in a federal prison, and to stay together the boys have fled from their home in New Jersey and traveled across the country to live in one of his sprawling investment houses. Their offer to Snuffkin? Pose as their father so they can continue to enjoy their junk-food-and video-game-strewn boy paradise. read more