Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Spring


The steady greening of the valley continues, with now even the Magnolias bursting into bloom.

Arizona is basically a desert.  As such, watering lawns can cost you $500 per summer.  Most homeowners put down landscape fabric and cover them with smooth, attractive, pink riverstone.  Think about it: no mowing, no weeding, no watering.  Perfect.  And as for foundation plants?  Cactii, what else?

Many buildings here use a strange, textured finish on their interior and exterior walls.  Not unattractive, but slightly monotonous and almost impossible to wallpaper.  Mock adobe?

Roads are multi-laned, speed limits are high (45MPH on a lot of streets, 75 on the highways), cities are sprawled out, public transit is low-priority but since you can only get anywhere by car, every store needs extensive parking.  Sprawl.


Guns are endemic, with what appears to be a daily shooting somewhere in this city of 4 million.  My favourite so far: police were called to break up a shoot-out between a man and his girlfriend.  No one died that time.


Street-legal here


Elaborate flower on a bush


Pretty




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