A short drive along Grant takes us to the Tucson Botanical Gardens. We took a picnic and hoped for a pleasant day. we were not disappointed. The gardens are well laid out, though rather specializing in desert type plants. There were lots of succulents and cacti as well as a lot of aromatic plants and herbs.
Of most interest was the butterfly and orchid house. We spent a fair amount of time there trying to identify butterflies and take photos.
We had our picnic in the shade of a grapefruit tree then explored some other areas. We stumbled across an landscape gardening competition, a bit like Chelsea Flower show, but only four local entrants, still it was interesting. The last area of note was what is termed a community garden, quite common in mexico, what was attractive was the prayer tree, on which people hang trinkets and icons as a prayer request. This had been simplified to small wooden hearts which had been decorated. It was a very peaceful area.#
Quite an enjoyable excursion.
I get hung up on taking nice pics, so here are some more.
Tuesday
Time to move on, having sucked Tucson dry of all its tourist adventure potential we are starting our drive West, not far, Picacho State Park is only 34 miles away, but is an isolated State Park in the middle of the Saguaro Desert, even if it is only a few miles from the Interstate 10 and a railway. We plan to try and chill out for a couple of days in the heat of the desert before moving on to see a bit more of Phoenix at the weekend.
