Saguaro Variations

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The saguaro cactus - a symbol for deserts, inhabitant of the Sonoran desert. I took a number of pictures of them in the area around Tucson, AZ recently.

The first picture (above) is of a saguaro 'forest' on a rocky hillside. The pictures below are a reminder of the wildlife - particularly birds - that depend on the saguaro for food and homes. Note the way the plant tissue hardens/heals around the hole made by a woodpecker (right pcture below).

The pictures above show on unusual saguaro growing on the campus of the University of Arizona. It formed a very different structure at the top than the normal branches. There is a small branch near the base of the cactus (shown in the right picture) that looks more typical. In the pictures below, there is an atypcial saguaro on the left (unusual apex, holes where 'eyes' might be....think 'octo-saguaro'!) and a close up of the beginnings of a branch on a more typical saguaro.

Quote of the Day - 12/26/2011

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When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. - John Muir

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Imagining a plant or an animal as a totally independent entity is an easy model but not very useful because it does not approach reality. We need to think in terms of systems and relationships. It is complicated and can sometimes become too hard to comprehend. The simplifying assumptions we make can lead to decisions that result in consequences no one anticipated.

 

Some examples:

 

  • We kill off predators because they are a danger to us and kill livestock but then we have an overpopulation of deer in urban areas. Their major ‘predator’ becomes the automobile.
  • We use fertilizers to increase yields of agricultural crops but then the incidence of algal blooms that kill fish occur more frequently.

 

 

The natural thread we ‘tug’ connects it all and our understanding is often not deep enough to anticipate the consequence of the decisions we are making. The key is to realize this…not be paralyzed by it. Decisions will have to be made but they should not be made with a point objective always overriding the knowledge - however incomplete - of the thread that links that change to ‘the rest of the world.’

Quote of the Day - 12/24/2011

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Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. - Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire.

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Where is your ‘one true home’?

Is it a desert…mountains…plain…forest…shore? Or does your ideal have more to do with the people that happen to be in a place?

The ideal place for me would be rolling hills or low mountains with some mixed deciduous and pine forest and some more open areas. There would be small streams that bubbled rapidly during rains and froze several times in the winter. However, my ideal home has more to do with people than place; if my family were not in the place with me it would not be home at all no matter how ideal the place itself happened to be. Meaningful work is also a requirement to form ‘home’ so the place needs to accommodate that either nearby or within.

What if you had the opportunity to live in a place for a year --- to witness all the seasons in a place very different from where you live today? Where would you choose? Do you think of any of those places as more ‘ideal’ or ‘right’ than where you live now?

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 3, 2011

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week: