Friday, September 21, 2012

We have had some fun and busy weekends around here.  We celebrated our first daughter's birthday on Sept. 7th with cake and flowers and gifts.  Then on Sept. 15th we celebrated her birthday and my birthday (coming up at the end of the month) by having a little tea party at the Chantilly Tea House in Tucson.  

We all made fancy hats and wore them to our tea.  We had individual salads, tea, of course, and all the fun little cakes and sandwiches that people have at a traditional "English Tea."  There were over 100 tea choices.  We chose "Ice Wine" and  a sweet green tea with pear.  We were all a little overwhelmed by the Ice wine tea.  It was extremely strong, bitter and overly floral.  Some of us added lots of sugar, which improved it somewhat, but most of us liked the green tea better.  Next time we will try 2 other flavors.  Last time we went, we chose chocolate mint and a vanilla jasmine.  They were both excellent teas.  

We also enjoyed cute little sandwiches.  Some were shaped like triangles with white bread and a shrimp salad filling.  Some were rectangle shaped wheat bread with a cream cheese walnut filling.  There were also open faced sandwiches and grapes. The sandwiches were followed by chocolate oreo scones and traditional sweet scones with lemon curd, clotted cream and raspberry preserves.  Weren't we stuffed by the time we left!  Then we walked it all off with a trip to Tucson's most prestigious mall, La Encantata.  

The Humane society was giving away lost and homeless animals that day.  My daughter found one she could not live without!  A cute little dog, he looks like a cross between a miniature Schnauzer and a Yorkie. He's about the size of a mini Schnauzer with the coloring of the Yorkie.  Turns out he is also housebroken and crate trained!  My daughter is thrilled with her little rescue and he loves all the grand kids too.

On Wednesday, Sept. 20, my friend and I took a trip over to the county seat, Bisbee, AZ.  It is about a 30 minute drive from Sierra Vista.  We visited all the little shops, historic buildings and the mine.  We had lunch at the Copper Queen Hotel. Very fancy and Victorian.  Bisbee is a fascinating historic town built on the side of a mountain just above the old Lavender Pit Copper Mine.  We also visited St. Pat's Church.  It was quite beautiful and filled with gorgeous stained glass windows.  After that, we went back to the mine and purchased a few rocks and arrow heads for the grand kids.

Our weather has greatly improved just this week.  The monsoon has finally died out and we are experiencing my favorite kind of weather, the reason most people move to Arizona.  It is cool in the mornings, about 59 degrees, then warms up as the day goes on to about 90 degrees with sunshine, dry breezes and high white fluffy clouds.  Wonderful! 


Wednesday, September 5, 2012

September has arrived once again.  Not that it is much cooler here or anything.  It is still very humid and hot.  We are still having rains, clouds and lightning storms.  It is definitely cooler in the mornings lately.  This morning it is heavily overcast with gray low lying clouds.  I am still watering the outdoor plants and starting to think about when I will move some inside and which ones will be sacrificed to the winter.  

My Texas Sage finally bloomed.  In fact they are loaded with lovely little purple flowers.  The bees are going crazy for the nectar.  I even managed to get a photo of a big black and yellow bumble bee this morning.

On Monday, the Labor Day Holiday, we visited Biosphere 2 near Oracle, AZ.  It is about an hour and a half drive from our place.  It is called "Biosphere 2"  because the earth itself is Biosphere 1.  It is a gigantic green house that was built at a cost of  $1.5 million in the 1980's and early '90s.  It has several different ecosystems and was built to be self-sustaining.  You may have heard of the first real closed experiment they did from 1991 to 1993 when they sealed 8 people inside.  They had to maintain everything themselves, grow their own food, purify their own water and take care of goats chickens and other animals.  They had a diet of 1800 calories a day and had to suspend the experiment because they could not do all the work and survive on that amount of calories.  There was just too much work.  They were only able to grow enough coffee beans for each of them to have one cup of coffee once every three weeks. 

Now the Biosphere 2 is open to the public and is owned and maintained by the University of Arizona.  Scientists from all over the world use it to do experiments.  They are doing one called "LEO" right now that involves studying how water affects environments and the complex interactions with water, geology, ecology, the atmosphere etc.  

It is an interesting place but it kinda creeped me out.  I could just see some Hollywood director coming in there to make some kind of horror flick or zombie movie.  

Last evening we had the pleasure of visiting with a friend who drove all the way from North Dakota.  He went to high school with Steve and me about 39 years ago!  We got to meet his charming wife and had a wonderful dinner at the Cactus Rose Restaurant in Tucson.  We spent about 4 hours catching up on all the events in our lives since we parted all those years ago.  It is funny how everyone has similar experiences and equally funny and weird relatives in their families.  We really enjoyed their visit and hope to get together again next year, maybe take a cruise together.  Something to look forward to!