March Cooking Class/More Garden Beds

March cooking class was French Onion Soup and Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Judy used 6 pounds of beef shank meat to make a beef broth. The soup used 4 pounds of onions and dry sherry. We ate it with a small baguette topped with Gruyere cheese. Delicious.
Judy adjusts her recipes for high altitude baking. I am loving learning how to do this. For instance, in this cake, 1 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder is adjusted to 1/2 tsp for high altitude. She used 5 eggs and 1 yolk instead of 4 eggs. Her frosting was great....not too much and not too sweet—4 oz. cream cheese, 2 T whole milk, 1 t vanilla, 2 c sugar. (She left out the butter, added whole milk instead of sour cream, and cut the cream cheese in half...it worked!)

We bought this set at Home Depot. We went there for something else and ended up with this. It's comfy...not sure how well this wicker will wear in the AZ sun but we will see. It's going to live under the west facing deck.

Randy is making more garden beds. He buys metal corners and they come together pretty quickly.

He has already planted peas, carrots, onions, beets, broccoli, radishes and some herbs.

He placed this large bed on top of the mound that we had planted in corn last year. He just dug around the outside until it was level. We plan on planting corn again....in stages.

We can't decide what to do around the outside of the beds.....weed cloth and granite? grass? Before we do anything we have to get the dirt level in this area.
In the next few weeks we hope to put a "ceiling" on the west facing deck so that the furniture doesn't get wet when it rains/snows. That's Matt's job. We also hope to get the lattice and window boxes painted. All of the plants are ordered from our local nursery. We are trying to find someone to help us plant them all.....it's quite a lot.

Last Snow?

Yep....another 6-7 inches of snow on Saturday. (Bird bath is a good indicator of the amount of snow we got.)

March weather is definitely unpredictable.

It rained most of the day on Friday....yahoo and snow on Saturday. We will take whatever precipitation we can get.

At least it melted relatively quickly and we didn't have to get the snow shovel out for the driveway.

The neighborhood does look nice in white.

It is supposed to be 75 by Wednesday and sunny all week. Heavy duty parka and fleece go back in the closet.

Photography Class Saguaro Shoot

Our photography class drove about 50 minutes south of Payson to the Sonoran Desert/Four Peaks area to photograph cactus.

Saguaros are the largest cactus in the U.S. They are pretty amazing in that they live for 150-200 years.
In their first year they grow only about 1/2 "......we have some in our greenhouse. They reach about a foot in 15 years. Ten feet in 40-50 years and 12-20 feet in 75-100 years when the arm buds usually appear.

The desert was a comfortable 68 degrees and it was green due to recent precipitation....even some snow.

This is a Cholla (CHOY-uh) plant. Native Americans eat the flower buds after steaming them. There is a class at the Desert Botanical Gardens on harvesting and cooking Cholla buds...the ultimate experience in eating local!

Young saguaros cannot survive either the heat of the desert sun or trampling. They usually grow under a "nurse" plant, such as a creosote bush or a paloverde tree. Spines on the stems of the older plants provide shade to the trunk.

After a rain, the accordion-like pleats of a saguaro expand as it draws up water with its shallow roots, which often sprawl over a 50 foot radius. A mature plant may soak up to 200 gallons of water during a rainstorm. During droughts the saguaro becomes slim again.

Once saguaros reach a height of about 8 feet, the first flower buds appear. Flowers smell like ripe melon, and attract bees and other insects during the daytime, and bats and moths at night. Full-grown saguaros produce at least 100 fruits in a season. In July, when mature, the fruits split open, revealing their scarlet linings, deep red pulp, and up to 2,000 tiny, jet-black seeds.

Pulp and seeds provide food for birds, small rodents, harvester ants, and other insects. Fruit and seeds are used by Native Americans for food. The wooden ribs of dead plants are used for shelters, knick-knacks, hiking sticks, and corrals. Woodpeckers drill holes in saguaros for nest sites, where in summer the inside temperature is 30 degrees lower than the outside air. The injured saguaro lines the woodpecker hole with scar tissue, producing a boot-shaped structure. These "boots" are used by nesting elf owls and other birds.

Lower Salt River Float

We signed up with the Desert Botanical Gardens for a sunrise float down the Lower Salt River. We left Payson at 5:00 am and got in the water at 6:30 am. It was COLD!

We had two rafts and two guides who knew a lot about the area. This is a great spot for tubing, biking and hiking. The lower stretch of the Salt River, though controlled by dams, flows perennially and is highly scenic in its setting among Arizona Upland Sonoran Desert vegetation.

My only problem was that I wore water sandals (no socks) and my feet were like popsicles. I assumed the sun would come out and warm us up.....it came out but it was not warm.

We saw juvenile Bald Eagles.....at least 4 but maybe 6. It was difficult to know if we were counting the same ones twice!

We also saw wild horses, heron, egret, waterfowl, and other riparian and upland birds. Migratory song birds are starting to appear. We noticed a beaver dam and we spotted the eagles' nest in one of the old Cottonwood trees.

We smelled a skunk but didn't see one. Our guide spent the night there and heard owls all night long. This area also is home to bighorn sheep, deer, javelina, coyotes, foxes and raccoons.

This is Red Mountain.....gorgeous light as the sun rose.

Randy got a photo of one of the eagles. The Tonto National Forest is about the size of Connecticut....a nice size range area for an eagle!

Fishermen were starting to arrive when we got out of the river. The area (Saguaro Lake) gets stocked with walleye, largemouth and yellow base, rainbow and brown trout, bluegills, channel catfish and crappie.