February 2024

Happy February! This month features one of my favorite flowers, an Iceland poppy! I love to pick these flowers up when I am at the flower nursery and watch them as they grow. If you haven’t seen one flowering they come from these little pods that open up and you can be surprised with the color that emerges. These delicate beauties give such a bright, cheerful pop of color to my garden. When their petals start to wilt I collect them and save them on my drying rack to see what beautiful shapes they will take.

And now, since it is already 80 degrees in Arizona, I must rush off to the flower nursery to bring some color to my winter garden!

Afternoon Tea Dreams/Growing Old

A photograph of a dried Iceland poppy.

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January 2024

Happy 2024! It’s a new year and time for a new series to display on your desktop! This year your calendars will feature images from the series Growing Old. These images are my favorite way to never have to say goodbye to a flower! There will be many new images of dried flowers mixed in with some you already know and love!

Over the Rainbow/Growing Old

A photograph of a dyed rose.

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December 2023 Calendar

Happy December! I couldn’t help but close this year out just like we started it, with an Arizona poppy! These wildflowers are a new discovery for me, this year, and I discovered them growing on the path where I run. I loved that they were there to brighten up the path for me and, I swear, it was like they were begging me to come back and photograph them. Well, I couldn’t say no! I hope that you won’t mind that I used this type of flower to bookend the year! Happy holidays, my friends!

Sassy Poppy/A Garden Variety

A photograph of an Arizona poppy.

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November 2023 Calendar

Happy November!

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October 2023 Calendar

Hello! Happy October! This month’s flower, an African Iris, brings back memories of living in the Bay Area in California. We lived in an apartment that had a shared courtyard for the backyard. The courtyard was filled with many types of flowers like hygrenea bushes, bearded irises, and of course these African Irises. Now, whenever I see this flower I am reminded of those days with the cool breeze while checking out what flower was currently in bloom. Do you have a flower that just takes you back to a specific place or moment?

Starstruck/A Garden Variety

A photograph of an African Iris.

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September 2023 Calendar

Hello! Happy September, my friends, fall is approaching! With the coming change of seasons, I like to sneak away into the backyard and spend my time thinking about what an interesting world we live in. I often think about the magic of flowers. In our garden we have some flowers that I buy from a nursery, ones we have planted from seed, and then there are some flowers, like this one, that just showed up in my yard this spring. It makes me wonder, where did the seed come from that grew this ursinia? I imagine that maybe it blew into the yard on a windy day and then has it been just waiting for the right amount of rain to come in and nourish that seed. The conditions were just right then to bring this delicate flower to life. But then I start to ponder, how many more seeds are just waiting to come to life and bring beauty to the yard?

Well, this wasn’t meant to be an analogy for how each one of us is affected by the little things that happen to us and can bring out something new and unexpected! But I guess it was the connection that I, myself, needed to hear. I encourage you, and me, to be on the lookout for the little things blowing our way this fall!

Lazy Afternoon/A Garden Variety

A photograph of a ursinia flower.

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Botanical Garden Flashlight Night

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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Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

August 2023 Calendar

The last few weeks have been SUPER HOT with, currently, 31 consecutive days over 110°f in Phoenix. Needless to say, we haven’t been going out of the house much and I haven’t been out photographing flowers in the yard. Instead, I am taking you back to a photograph I took in April. Our yard was covered in California Poppies and because we have our own poppies, and we water them, we are able to keep them for so much longer! Enjoy some of the beauty from my backyard!  I hope that this image will be like a cool spring day in the middle of summer!

Summer Escape/A Garden Variety

A photograph of a California Poppy.

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July 2023 Calendar

July in Minnesota looks vastly different than July in Arizona. The kids and I were able to escape to Minnesota, for many fun adventures, while Bryce stayed in Arizona to keep the house full of pets up and running. Well, our summer days there look like flowers growing on the side of the road, spending days outdoors running around at the lake, and hiking. One of the flowers that is on the sides of the road, and all over the yard, is the bird’s-foot trefoil, a clover-like plant, and it certainly adds a pop of color to the green everywhere. Minnesota is green and lush, but I see all of this with the desert of Arizona's eye, yet I know that they are also in need of rain. It makes me so happy to get to see a totally different type of flower that doesn’t grow around Arizona, and to get to share it with you!

Summer in Minnesota/A Garden Variety

A photograph of a bird’s-foot trefoil.

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Father's Day e-card

It’s that time! It’s time to wish that special dad, your own dad, your friend, your uncle, or any special dad in your life a very happy Father’s Day!

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