Sunflower earrings

I love most flowers, but one of my favorites are sunflowers, especially the ones with white petals and yellow centers. I found these lucite cabochons that I found irresistible and decided to make earrings and a necklace for my shop. I love how they came out!

My beautiful Mescal tree

I once went shopping at a Wallgreen and when I got back to my car I noticed this short bush growing with gorgeous fragrant purple flowers and golden tan seed pods. I just had to get me one of those. I've had mine for about 4-5 years now. They're very slow growers, this one is about 6 feet tall. I'm training mine to be a tree, but they don't get very tall, maybe 8-10 feet or so, especially in our hot desert. It is quite drought tolerant and fit for a xeriscape garden.

I went out to my garden this afternoon to check on it and found it had many blooms already. The whole area around it smelled of grape kool-aid. Love the plant, but don't love the one inch caterpillars that invade it later on in the year.
Mountain Laurel
Mescal
Shophora Secundiflora

Doves waiting for breakfast

When I moved to this newly built house four years ago, the backyard was leveled bare land. I quickly planted my beloved Peruvian mesquite and a couple of Red bird of Paradise bushes and quite a few more plants. I noticed one or two doves visiting the yard.

Then I started throwing some bird seed and then added bowls of water. Now the word has got out that there's a human sucker who comes out every morning to replace the water and throw some wildbird seed on the ground. Here's a picture of maybe 50 doves (and one pigeon) waiting for me on the top of the roof of my neighbor in back. They wait about five minutes to make sure I'm safely inside before they swoop down to their breakfast. Click on picture for a closer look.

Feeding them puts a positive note to the rest of my day.