Tag: Glendale Main Library

Sleepyhead.

A little bee (probably

Diadasia diminuta)

sleeping in a desert globemallow flower (Sphaeralcea ambigua). Members of the Diadasia are sometimes called chimney bees, for the turreted entrances they construct for their underground nests. This species specializes on globemallow pollen. 

At the xeriscape garden at the Glendale Main Library, Glendale, Arizona. 

Resident rooster.

Some of you may have noticed that the fatchance dateline has changed. A few months ago I made a cross-town move, from Tempe to Glendale, Arizona. If you have visited the Phoenix area you know that its vast sprawl has created countless pocket communities. The surrounding older agricultural towns like Glendale have been absorbed into the urban mass, but there are neighborhoods, sometimes whole blocks, where a more rural vibe persists. On the first morning after we moved into the house in Glendale we were enthusiastically greeted (four a.m.!) by the neighborhood rooster, and he has continued to do so every day since. This is no hipster rooster, but an authentic barrio rooster, whose proud ancestors first crowed here in the early 1930′s when a WPA project laid out the community’s first paved streets and sidewalks and the first homes were built. 

The rooster in the photograph above is not my neighbor bird, but a denizen of the Glendale library. The library is built on a remnant parcel of the old Sahauro Ranch – the first large-scale farm established here during the territorial era, after irrigation made citrus cultivation practicable. The descendants of Sahuaro Ranch chickens and peacocks and guineafowl now freely roam the library grounds. 

Resident rooster.

Some of you may have noticed that the fatchance dateline has changed. A few months ago I made a cross-town move, from Tempe to Glendale, Arizona. If you have visited the Phoenix area you know that its vast sprawl has created countless pocket communities. The surrounding older agricultural towns like Glendale have been absorbed into the urban mass, but there are neighborhoods, sometimes whole blocks, where a more rural vibe persists. On the first morning after we moved into the house in Glendale we were enthusiastically greeted (four a.m.!) by the neighborhood rooster, and he has continued to do so every day since. This is no hipster rooster, but an authentic barrio rooster, whose proud ancestors first crowed here in the early 1930′s when a WPA project laid out the community’s first paved streets and sidewalks and the first homes were built. 

The rooster in the photograph above is not my neighbor bird, but a denizen of the Glendale library. The library is built on a remnant parcel of the old Sahauro Ranch – the first large-scale farm established here during the territorial era, after irrigation made citrus cultivation practicable. The descendants of Sahuaro Ranch chickens and peacocks and guineafowl now freely roam the library grounds.