Tucson's Tohono Chul Park

We visited the 47-acre Tohono Chul Park recently. The park is a mishmash of gardens, a bistro, nature trails, an art gallery, and more.

Wandering through the garden paths amidst plantings of desert flora I was struck once again by Tucsonans’ love of walls.

At an overlook in the park’s gardens above the entrance of one of the hiking trails, for example, one sees rock-walled terraces.

Many walls follow graceful curves, luring one to see what lies beyond.

Inside this walled courtyard are benches where visitors can rest in the shade of ancient ironwood trees. The park provides Internet access there, a seeming necessity in a culture so attuned to electronic media, although it seemed a distraction from the surroundings.

The day was warm, the sky bluer than blue against the white walls of one of the park’s buildings.

It was the perfect day to photograph an ocotillo, an incredibly thorny plant that periodically grows leaves, then drops them. Some people plant ocotillos in a row to form a hedge that would certainly deter any interloper.

This close-up shows the incipient leaf buds.

Next month the ocotillos will produce clusters of firecracker red blooms at the tips of their thorny stems. I imagine those blooms are the ocotillo’s saving grace.

I've barely scratched the surface of showing the Tohono Chul Park, but these are the things that impressed me the most. 

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer