Desert Botanical Gardens - Phoenix, Arizonia

Everywhere we go, I have to visit the local Botanical Gardens.  I love it because they usually always have flowers, bushes, trees and plants native to the area and of course the Desert Botanical Gardens did not disappoint.  We have very good friends in Seattle, Washington and his hobby is cacti.  He collects as many different species as he can find.  Now you know he has to baby them in that area as it's cold, cloudy and wet a lot of the year but he does a great job with them.  He's built a green house so he can baby them as much as possible.  He belongs to a group there that works mainly with cacti.  But anyway, We we went to visit the gardens early Friday morning, our last morning in Phoenix. We probably got there around 9:30 that morning and it was already pushing 100 degrees so I knew we wouldn't be able to to wander the whole 125 acres.  We spent about 2 hours wandering the trails and admiring the flora.  I really don't know much about cacti but after visiting and examining a lot of different species I think I will study up on it a bit.  I found a lot of it fascinating.  Some of pictures I post I will have comments on.  I have no idea what most of this is ... if you do ... feel free to comment!

This is at the entrance.  The lightest trees are made of glass and donated from a local artist.

I had no idea what this was but it looked like some kind of fruit.  I know, I know us silly southerners ... but once I was told what it was I recognized the name ... it's a prickly pear plant.  Not only is the fruit edible but so are the leaves.  I found that very interesting and wanted to pass it on just in case there are others out there that have no idea like me.  LOL.

This is my sweet little lizard that seemed to be as interested in us as we were in him.  He was watching us and kind of walking and keeping pace with us while we strolled through a certain area so I stopped and snapped his picture.  He got very camera shy and skittered off after that.  I guess I offended him.

That's all the pictures I have of the gardens.  I only had my cell phone with me and it died while I was there.  I forgot my camera completely and wasn't prepared which seemed to be my mantra for this whole trip when it came to pictures but we did enjoy ourselves so I guess that was really what mattered the most.  We bought ourselves a bottle a water and stopped and refilled at the refill stations along the way while we walked.  It was a very hot day and the sun was extremely unforgiving but the gardens were beautiful and well worth visiting.  There are some shaded areas and lots of benches scattered throughout the trails so that you can sit and rest which we took advantage of from time to time.  There are birds that sing and many types of butterflies that flutter about from one flowering cactus to another.  they have nice rock water fountains so you hear the birds singing and water running almost like a brook in different places.  Then in one area there is this wonderful shaded place that has this great vine thing that has grown up and over and makes this cool area and they have little pots of flowers there and chairs to sit in and I think they had a soft flute music coming from somewhere but it was very tranquil and in the center because there are like 3 or 4 sitting areas there ... in the center this is this large flat rock with water that runs over it ... it's another type of fountain.  Just very peaceful and restful.  It's a wonderful place to just sit and meditate.   They have done a wonderful job on these gardens.