Left in Tucson

  Our newest neighbors For the last  week, Jim has been having to refill one of our 3 hummingbird feeders every day rather than every other day or so.  This one in particular hangs from a hook Jim rigged under the overhang of our backyard covered patio.  The feeder placed in a direct line of view from both our living room window and the back door.  We can watch hummingbirds come and go as they sip Jim's customized  blend of sugar and water, and sometimes a little something extra, like cranberry juice, Coke or Welch's grape juice.  The hummingbirds have become quite used to our comings and goings as well, and they no longer vanish as soon we come out the door, lounge on the patio or use the backyard in typical human fashion.   Jim finally came to the conclusion that the only way that feeder was showing up empty every morning was that bats must be using the feeder at night.  So, last night, we waited until after dark for any sign of evening...

I just returned from Sprouts Farmer's Market here in Tucson, AZ.  They have been selling green chiles from Hatch, NM for the last week!  For anyone who is not familiar with Hatch green chiles , just trust the natives here in the southwest, when they tell you they are The Best green chiles.  I bought a few of the mild ones, but you can also get medium hot and hot chiles.  They are perfect for roasting.  The simplest way to roast green chiles is to place them on a cookie sheet in the oven. Just wash them, dry them.  Don't cut or seed them!  Place them in a single layer on a cookie sheet.  You can line the cookie sheet with aluminum foil, but I use parchment paper.  Set the oven to low broil.  Watch them carefully, every 5 minutes turn them with tongs, and roast until they are completely black.  It should take about 15 minutes. Place them in a bowl with a damp dish towel or paper towel over the top for about 20 minutes unti...

>  Interesting Arizona Facts > > 1. Arizona has 3,928 mountain peaks and summits—more mountains than > > any one of the other Mountain States (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, > > Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming). > > > > 2. All New England, plus the state of Pennsylvania would fit inside Arizona. > > > > 3. Arizona became the 48th state and last of the contiguous states on > > February 14, 1912 . > > > > 4. Arizona’s disparate climate can yield both the highest temperature > > across the nation and the lowest temperature across the nation in the > > same day. > > > > 5. There are more wilderness areas in Arizona than in the entire > > Midwest. Arizona alone has 90 wilderness areas, while the Midwest has > > 50. > > > > 6. Arizona has 26 peaks that are more than 10,000 feet in elevation. > > > > 7. Arizona has the largest contiguous ...

  Image of Sicily   This is my paraphrase from something I discovered while reading "Midnight in Sicily," by Peter Robb. When visiting southern Italy and Naples in particular, the author came to the conclusion that coffee is a "Neapolitan drug."  The sugar that Neapolitans put into their coffee with such care may in fact be tied to the "cult of coffee" throughout southern Italy. Naples was one of Europe's first and biggest importers of sugar.  According to Fernand Breudel in his book, "The Mediterranean,"  in the single year of 1625, when sugar was barely known in the rest of Europe, Naples imported "the "unbelievable quantity" of 15 hundred tons of sugar.  In the same year, Naples also imported 15 hundred tons of honey.  This huge consumption was recorded 50 years after coffee first arrived form the East.  The Venetians first imported coffee in 1580 from Constantinople, where it had arrived 30 years earlier from ...

Life’s lessons come in strange forms. As cognizant, sentient beings, we, unlike probably all other creatures, have the ability to define our lives through our experiences.   I believe that when we avoid unpleasant things, and seek personal comfort in experiences which only represent pleasure and safety, that we envelop ourselves with a cocoon of numbness, reducing our lives to an ever-diminishing zone of comfort that ultimately imprisons, and collapses upon us, as we continuously tip-toe almost up to, but never quite over, the boundary of that comfort zone.   Sometimes those lessons appear in the form of helpless little birds flopping in the road. None of us can escape our ultimate destinations.   If we stay cognizant of that fact, it can give value and meaning to our lives.   As we race against the clock to meet deadlines, be first at the opening of the Christmas sales, muscle our way through rush hour traffic, and put our nam...

Sparrow Rehab Thursday, 7/12/2012, as I was heading out to get our mail from our curbside mailbox, a noticed a little sparrow fluttering on the ground by the front wheel of my car, which was parked a few feet away from the mailbox in the shade of our two olive trees.  I called, Jim, a.k.a Doc Doolittle, to check out this little guy who seemed to be having difficulty staying in flight.  Every time he tried to fly, he fell over on his side and crash landed on the ground.  After several attempts, Jim was able to scoop him up and bring him into our tiny Tucson backyard and patio to take a closer look at this adolescent English Sparrow.  You see, over the course of 5 years, Jim has succeeded into turning our tiny backyard into a bonafiable wildlife habitat.  Along with a family of hummingbirds who frequent two hummingbird feeders, there are also sparrows, doves, thrashers, woodpeckers, and a resident hawk who keeps a watchful eye, from a nearby Ponderosa P...

It's mid-July, and Figaro has started to produce a whopping crop of figs.  I have got to keep one step ahead of the birds in order to get the sweetest, ripest figs.  Time to pull out my collection of the best Fig recipes. Check out the link below for my favorite.  Th Bayou Woman has the best recipe for Fig Preserves.  It's simple, easy, and everyone will love it!  There are a few more recipes on this site for July 2011. Delightful! Fig Preserves Recipe