A desert oasis in Phoenix

On Wednesday, Dear Husband and I visited the Desert Botanical Garden. We love botanical gardens anyway, and this was a COVID-safe activity while traveling. AND they were hosting a full-scale Dale Chihuly exhibit at the same time. Their motto is a twin-headed agave plant.

Below, the first Chihuly pieces you see are this spiky trio of lime-green yucca trees at the check-in gates. After that, as soon as you walk in, there is a boat full of different-colored glass shapes, which was hands-down our favorite of everything on display.

In addition to the glass, of course, there was plenty of interesting architecture (mostly gazebos), as well as all those plants. We learned to pronounce saguaro with a "w," and that the plants typically need to be about 65 years old before they grow their first arm. There were so many different kinds of cacti and wildflowers. There is also a small butterfly building, but I didn't get any good photographs there. We walked around the whole park in about 3 hours and were ready for lunch, but the expensive restaurant at the front was too busy, so we opted to go back to the house for chicken noodle soup for him and leftovers for me. (He had come down with acute gastroenteritis on Tuesday--bad airport burger?--so on the one hand it turned out to be a good thing that the baseball games were cancelled due to the labor dispute, so we could stay home for DH to recover, but on the other hand it was really uncomfortable for him.)

Yes, we were the fools from the East Coast ogling the palm trees and cacti.

It's a hedgehog cactus [sic]!

On the left, an ironwood tree in a metal box to protect it next to a saguaro statue made out of pick heads; on the right, a saguaro fanning out at the top (the docent said they don't know why it does that). 

In one of the exhibition halls, they had multiple rooms holding a variety of Chihuly pieces, both glass pieces and drawings/paintings. I had not expected that on top of all the statues outside as well.

These curly-cues must have been a satisfying to make as pumpkin stems!

We found a desert oasis! For more pics, here's my Google Photo Album.