Violet and I had an excellent opportunity to get to go to the Desert Botanical Garden for their Flashlight tour. This is open to anyone but Violet was getting to do this with Girl Scouts. They had different stations set up throughout the garden and we could visit them as well as the other places. We arrived at 7 pm, just before the sunset, but it was still quite hot outside, around 107° f, and our first stop was at the drawing with glow-in-the-dark chalk. They had buckets of chalk and asked the kids to make something desert related on the black cloth. Violet decided to draw a quick saguaro cactus. Then we strolled through an area that had some great cactus called espostoa nana, which had dense white hair that grows on it, it is almost tempting to touch that but I think you would quickly come to regret that choice.

Our next stop was, thankfully in an air-conditioned room, where she was looking at different plans under microscopes and trying to guess which each one was. Then we both learned about how mesquite trees have so many helpful options from creating pitch paint, which we painted fun designs onto some pottery, all the to the seed pots being ground up to be made into flour, which tastes like cinnamon and a hint of chocolate. Now Violet keeps asking if we can get some mesquite flour to make pancakes! We learned about the saguaro cactus and how birds will peck away at them until they create a hole and then that hole will become calloused and they can make a nest in that spot. They also told us about how the saguaro generally starts growing arms once they are between 50-70 years old.

One of our favorite things was they had a telescope set up on a mountain that anyone could come and look through. It was a nice and powerful telescope that they had pointed at the moon and you could see the craters. When Violet went up to look she said, “WOW!!” loudly and exuberantly and the lady said, “That is the type of reaction we are looking for and exactly why we do this!” On our walk back out this was the thing that she talked about! We made a quick stop to check out her saguaro glowing in the black light and went home to cool ourselves off.

Since this is something that anyone can do I would highly recommend checking out the Flashlight Night at the Botanical Garden, I just wouldn’t do it in the middle of the summer heat!

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