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!