SNOW in Tucson! School, Sabino Canyon, and Saguaro National Park

During the work-week, I am a teacher...

...and so, yesterday in Tucson, when the rain began to change over to snow, I just had to let my students go outside. For this particular young woman--originally from Africa--it was the first time she'd ever seen the white stuff falling from the sky:

Snow in Tucson is a rare treat; the last time kids in this desert city enjoyed it was six years ago, before I moved here. 

As it began to accumulate, the only sane and humane thing for me to do was to let them go outside and have a snowball fight:

By mid-afternoon, the clouds had begun to lift;

I went for a hike in Sabino Canyon after work--

the lower-elevation snow was melting quickly... 

...but then the clouds began to roll back in...

...and by dinner-time, it was snowing--AND sticking--again.

It snowed for most of the evening.

So, this morning, I got up early and drove out to Saguaro National Park East, (about a 15 minute drive from where we live), hoping that if I got there before the sun came up, I'd beat the melting.

I got my wish. 

For years, I've wanted to see the rare spectacle of a snow-covered saguaro-forest...

The timing was perfect: today and tomorrow are school-holidays--it's the annual Tucson Rodeo/Fiesta de los Vaqueros. It might have been overpoweringly tempting to call in sick, had I not already had the day off...
You might get snow down in the Tucson basin, oh, maybe once a decade or so. The mountains get blanketed several times each winter, but it's rare that the snow-line drops below three- or four-thousand feet...

Frosted ocotillos looking so wintry...

...but look closely: you'll see the new spring leaf-buds under the snow:

As soon as the sun rose over the ridge of the Rincon Mountains,

I could hear the drip-drip-drip of the melting begin...

Sun, snow, and saguaros...

By mid-day, the blanket of white was a memory...

So ephemeral, snow in the desert...

Next time--when? 

It might be years from now.

By then, who knows what mobile photography will be like?

[For more snow-in-the-desert-photos (non-iphone), 

see my other blog.]

African Art Village, Bull in the Neighborhood, Winter Skies over the Canyon

There's been plenty of visual fodder for iphoneography here in Tucson the past few days...

                   ...starting with where I went last Friday after work: the African Art Village:

For about two decades now, this city in the Sonoran Desert has become a February gathering place for artists and vendors from all over Africa: for a couple of weeks, a tent city pops up and about a hundred vendors set up shop. 

 Associated with the six-decade-old tradition of the international Tucson Gem, Mineral & Fossil Showcase, this is one of the largest gatherings of its kind in North America.

A small outdoor kitchen serves up Lamb stew, rice and plantains so you can get a taste of West Africa before or after browsing. 

There's something for almost everyone--from strands of beads for jewelry-makers to monumentally-sized sculptures, and of course, tie-dye clothing. Furniture from Mali, textiles from Burkina Faso, totems from Sudan, sculpture from Côte d'Ivoire, Zulu baskets, reproductions of Bénin bronzes and masks from across the continent--all in one place.

The rest of the year, 

it's a nondescript desert lot behind a Waffle House 

adjacent to the Interstate highway--

but every February, it's a polyglot bazaar.

This year it's running through February 17th.

=================================

Closer to home, on my side of town...
...about a five-minute-drive from where I live, there's a little stretch of semi-rural road that feels like elsewhere--the water table is higher and the mesquite bosques are dense, and a pecan orchard complements the pines and eucalyptus...sheep, cows, horses--it's bucolic and tucked away, and on my way home from the grocery store Saturday, I thought I'd take the scenic detour.

Check out those horns! 

(used PicFrame app for this triptych)

By mid-morning Saturday, the winter storm clouds were lifting--

this is what the oasis at Agua Caliente Park looked like:

Sunday afternoon, I took my iPhone with me on my run in Sabino Canyon--good time for sunflares:

This time of year, the skies over the canyon are so often dramatic:

There's a particular spot at the mouth of the canyon where I like to run by some cottonwoods;
back in mid-December, when the autumn leaves were still hanging on, the evening sky really lit up the scene:


--a fun spot to go back to, to see how the scene would look at about the same time of day a couple of weeks later:

 --and now, finally, all the leaves are off--winter trees-and-sky always a nice subject for monochrone, and here, a bit of the 'grunge' filter:

And last one for tonight--from a little hike my wife and I did last night to a spot overlooking the Canyon: