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Category Archives: Tucson

A Visit to Horse’n Around Rescue

08 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by ninagarden in Arizona, cowgirl, horse, horses, ranch, Tucson, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

horses, ranch, Summer

In May, I went to Tucson, and my dad, my niece and I went on a day trip to Horse’n Around horse rescue in Hereford, Arizona. I saw some great horses here, and it is a truly beautiful location — right next to the border with Mexico. In the background of this picture below, you can see the fence. It’s that black line on the horizon. It looks like a train track.

It’s also on the photo behind this giant donkey in retirement from the Grand Canyon.

We were there about three hours and saw all 48 horses. They had some great horses and some sad stories to tell. Like this gorgeous guy below who broke his knee in a team roping competition.


You can’t tell now, but if you ride him about an hour he begins to favor it. He is in a mountain pasture where he has to climb around a little and they hope it rehabilitates him.

Here are two mares I wanted to adopt. The first photo is of horse I keep thinking about– Desert Rose, the appaloosa. The second photo below is a mare named Kaluha that I learned was already adopted this since my May visit — she will be a great horse for someone! Dad liked her because she reminded him of a horse he had a long time ago. He is feeding her in the picture below Rose.

They were from a seizure of more than 40 starving horses at an old dude ranch– so sad.

I may go back and ride Rose soon! She is stuck in my mind, and I keep thinking about her. I love her color and her markings. I love the idea of helping her out. She was so thin when they got her.  Now she has filled out and grown up. She looks like a cowgirl’s horse…

If you are looking to adopt a horse, please consider going to Horse’n Around Rescue Ranch. When you adopt a horse, you pay a fee (basically you buy the horse) and you get 10 hours of riding instruction with your new companion before you can take her/him home. When I brought my horse Bayito to San Diego, I learned that it isn’t very expensive to trailer a horse to Southern California so if you are looking, you might consider one from Horse’n Around.

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Cotillion Cowgirl

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by ninagarden in Arizona, cowgirl, horse, ranch, Tucson, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Agua Linda, farm, horses, ranch, Tucson

I inherited some of my Aunt’s photos a few months ago, and looking through them, I was inspired by this fact — my aunt, who was always glamorous and social, who wore beautiful clothes and surrounded herself with beautiful and glamorous things, was also, a cowgirl.

For the first time, as I looked through the numerous photos of her in ballgowns, costumes, tutus, pearls and neat 60s sheaths, I also saw her riding a horse. A horse!

She grew up on the Agua Linda farm south of Tucson and had ranch in her blood. The “farm” was more about feeding cattle than raising crops, and while my grandpa had sold the old ranch headquarters, he still had the Aros Ranch for a while. I never thought of my aunt as a ranch girl so when I found all the photos of her on horseback, I was surprised. I never saw her on a horse, or near one, for that matter.

But in this old plastic bag of photos that I collected from my brother’s dining room table after he retrieved the remains of her estate, I found a few hints of the cowgirl my aunt once was.

Most of the photos, of course, display her understated glamour — many show dinners with my grandma and grandpa, lady’s lunches and social gatherings.

As a stewardess for American Airlines in the 60s, she had her hair styled by Vidal Sassoon, wore her uniform with pride and lived, no doubt, the high flying life of an elite flight attendant jet-setting around the world. Just look at her expression! Don’t you want to know what she is thinking?

auntninaflightattend

Before she left home, she wore quite a few ball gowns. Here (see girl on right) decked in satin shoulder-length gloves, her hair golden and shimmering as any movie star, she posed for photos at parties I can only imagine.

auntninacotillion

But here she is on my Grandfather’s  horse Tom Thumb, Nov. 1958 in Prescott. The faded inscription on the back says something about “camp on Plum Creek” and “just before sold” is written below  in purple pen. I can’t even believe she’s wearing jeans and look at her belt buckle! (That saddle looks oddly familiar. I wonder if that’s the one I use today.)

cowgilrauntnina

Standing in her white satin cotillion gown, pearls at her neck and bow encircling her tiny waist, she looks pensive. I love how the  black tree enhances her white gown and flowers. The picture is inscribed Dec. 1963, and I wonder where she is heading after this photo shoot? Did she have to drive 60 miles to town or was she already at her destination? (I called my mother and she told me that my aunt was probably heading to the Tucson Symphony Cotillion.)

auntninacotillion2

In the photo below, she smiles at the camera while riding a “big red horse,” as I like to call them–where? I do not know but it looks like somewhere near Tucson. Tamarask and eucalyptus trees rise to the monsoonal clouds.

cowgirlnina

Then years later,  in her red slicker and equally red nail polish, she grips the reins on a winter day. I know that signet ring on her pinkie — I hope one of my nieces have it.

latercowgirlnina

In her 50s and 60s she moved away from Tucson to live with her husband on a homestead in a log cabin in Mule Creek, New Mexico. She had acreage, fought brush fires, and hung wreaths on all the gates along the highway at Christmas time. She seemed to love that life just as much as her Jr. League days. Whenever she went back to Tucson, she let you know how much she despised the traffic. She was content with her country life.

She said, “you go back to what you know.”

When she passed away, way too soon from breast cancer, my sister and I drove to New Mexico and cleaned out her closets. While she had adapted her wardrobe to her rural life, she still had many of her clothes from her old self: lace, satin, and many brocade shawls. The main thing that struck me was how many outfits she had hanging in her two walls of closets. Probably five hundred different outfits were neatly arranged on tiered hangers — each hanger held two or three different outfits: pants and a shirt with a matching shawl. She had more shoes than we knew what to do with–many of them mail ordered and still in plastic wrappers–unworn.

Something of the old cotillion girl hid there in her closet waiting for the next ranch potluck, or maybe, an invitation to a fancy gala in an exotic location.

We can only wonder what possessed her to keep all those clothes.

*********

Here I am as a baby in her arms. I am her namesake and I am proud to have been her niece.

 

meandauntnina

Here’s two other photos that I wanted to share–in the first, she’s in some kind of costume that she no doubt invented and she’s holding a cat ( also in costume) and the other is of her and her favorite dog. I’m not sure here it was taken –maybe along the banks of the Santa Cruz.

auntninaandcatdressup
autN&dog

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Seed Library–Awesome Idea

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by ninagarden in Arizona, garden, Tucson, vegetables

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Seeds, vegetables

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Pima County Public Library Seed library in Tucson, Arizona–drawers full of seeds for the taking. What a great idea for a public library!

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Opening the seed library with great excitement. The girls did not know what they would find inside.

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Grandpa Karl studies the seeds. He is looking for something specific. Maybe melons or lettuce–the crops he used to grow the farm at Picacho Peak. Oh yeah, cotton too. We found cotton seeds in the seed library.

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At this library, you can check out books and seeds, too! By harvesting seeds from your garden and bringing them back to the library, you are creating a community, encouraging gardening and fostering sustainability. The plants that grow and thrive in your garden are the strongest for your region. It makes sense to harvest them and plant them again. This practice is ancient. We develop seeds better adapted to our climate and save money too.

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The harvested seeds are brought back to the library and shared with others. You can “check out” five seed packs a month. Hopefully, you will collect your seeds at harvest and bring them back to share with others. At the library, you can learn different seed harvesting techniques. Also try http://www.seedsavers.org.

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There are three ways to save seeds: dry seed processing for plants that grow seeds on the outside of the plant such as sunflowers or peas. Wet seed processing is for seeds that grow inside the fleshy fruit of the plant. Rinse them off and let them dry. If the seeds have a gel-like coating, then use the fermentation process. This requires mixing them with water in a jar and allowing them to ferment (grow mold.) It’s a little complex but sounds fun to try. This is for tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, etc.

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For more information, contact Seed.library@pima.gov. Also try http://www.library.pima.gov/seed-library I wish I had this at my local library!

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Agua Linda Farm — Thanksgiving

23 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by ninagarden in Arizona, pumpkins, Tucson, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Agua Linda, farm, Oaklahoma, ranch, Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I was thankful for my family, for my work which has kept me insanely busy for a month, and for a day spent in the country this fall learning about one of my ancestor gardens at the Agua Linda Farm.

We spent the day there in October with my dad, my brother and his wife Sherry and my two girls.  The Agua Linda is special to my family because my grandparents lived there roughly from 1950 to 1957 after they sold part of the big ranch. My parents lived there in a small adobe house (that no one liked) and my brothers and sisters were raised there as babies. My grandmother built a beautiful Joesler designed home and changed the name from Reventon to Agua Linda for the beautiful Santa Cruz River that she had a view of from her sweeping picture windows.

I was married there in 2000.

So the place is very significant for my family. (And any data I give is probably contestable except for my wedding!)

My family sold it to the Loew family in the late 50s when we could no longer afford to keep it. Members of the Loew family (of Loew’s Theaters and other famous Hollywood names) have lived there since and they have been gracious enough to let me get married there and also indulge in our visits. They have also turned it into a fantastic organic farm that’s open to the public, hosting the greatest pumpkin patch you’ve ever been to. (Of course, I’m biased.)

Pumpkin head courtesy of Uncle Carlos

We had a great day there and also a great conversation with my dad who told me all the history I should know and seem to continuously forget. He says it’s a frustrating place for him to remember the crops that didn’t grow and the cattle that he had to sell, but it still seems magical to me and it’s truly one of the most beautiful places on earth. My Grandma was right! And her iris plants (and maybe violets) still sprout along the brick pathways and courtyard surrounding the house.

Well, here are some photos and some interesting things about silage that my dad told me. (I asked about that because my daughter ran away from me in the silage maze!)

Back in the days we started the farm, they had a cattle feeding operation there and they fed raised corn to feed the cattle–Mexican June, was the name of the corn. It grew so high and tall that the producers of the movie Oklahoma used it for the “Corn as high as an elephant’s eye.” No joke. (Later I will post a beautiful picture of my mother standing next to it.) They bought it and took it away from the farm and planted it somewhere else where they filmed that scene. At least, that’s family lore. But here’s the silage details, which are probably boring next to the gossip, but the farmers out there might like it.

“We put 3,000 tons of silage in a pit. We buried it and put water on it and it ferments.  Wheat, soybeans, cotton, …you chop it and ferment it and the cows get drunk on it.”

“First we dug it and with pitch forks feed it to the cattle. Then we found a silage loader. You dropped the silage on a conveyor belt and it went on the feed truck and we fed the cattle. It was the first silage loader in Arizona. Our silage pit was the length of a football field.”

Here we digress into a general history of every ranch in Southern Arizona and who sold what and who bought what and who lived on a crappy piece of land where it never rained (I think that was every rancher in Southern Arizona.)

Well, I wrote enough and I’m boring you. I hope you enjoyed the pictures! If you are ever in Tucson, drive south towards Nogales and go to the Agua Linda Farm. There’s a big sign on the highway so you can’t miss it.

Happy Day with candy apples!

Happy Thanksgiving! What garden, new or in your past, are you thankful for?

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Gardeners: Take a Photo!

21 Monday May 2012

Posted by ninagarden in garden, gardening, roses, Tucson

≈ 2 Comments

I had a great idea to write a blog about all the women who had influenced my gardening. I was going to put pictures of them in their gardens next to a description of what they liked to plant and how it influenced me. I started asking family members for photos of my Grandma Vi, who loved to garden, and Grandma Betty who had a tidy rose garden in her patio. Also my mother, who loves her poppies. I am planning to call it Ancestor Gardening, and I’ve already written the first one about my mother and her poppies—but guess what? No one had a photo.

Why? I guess the gardeners were too busy gardening!

My mother’s neighbor helped me out and  took a photo of my mother with her African Daisies. (She had taken lots of photos of her flowers over the years, but never one of herself in the place she worked so hard to make beautiful.)

I sat down with my mother on a recent trip and culled through family photos, searching. I thought we’d find one of Grandma Vi in her garden, or at least her garden—a little farm she created in her backyard—she had planted so many citrus trees, berries, pine trees, roses, you name it.  Nothing. Nada. Nope. Not one photo. The closest thing I could find was a photo of me at 18 months, my grandma and her sister holding me in front of a prickly Pyracantha bush not the beautiful lush plants I remember so well.

Then I found one of my mother, my grandma and me in front of one of her favorite roses. President Lincoln. I knew it because she talked so much about it as I was growing up—”Abe Lincoln” she called it; she loved that rose. At least a few of its rich red blooms peeked out from behind us. But the rest of her garden is only in my memory.

“We were too poor for a camera,” my mother explained, as to why she has no photos of her childhood. But by the time grandma had bought her house, paid off her 1950s fin-tailed Cadillac and planted her back ½ acre with about 90 roses – all earned by waitressing and managing the soda fountain at Walgreens—you’d think she would have taken a picture. Probably she was too busy watering all those roses with a hose—irrigations systems were not easy to come by, and in the desert of Tucson, she spent a lot of time watering.

My Grandma Betty was the same when it came to delinquent photography. I can’t find a single picture of her in the beloved rose garden she had tended and later had a gardener care for. She loved cut roses and had many bouquets throughout her home. When she died I inherited several vases and frogs—those funny spiky flower holders. I imagine them full of her roses. And I wonder if there were pictures we threw away that would have shown me the flowers she loved.

I finally found one of her standing in the patio, next to the rose garden—I think there is a vase of her roses on the table, but that’s all. Well, I did find this other one of her next to a painting of her flowers. I’m sure those are her flowers in the vase because I recognize the parrot statue. It was a white marble bird bookend that sat on a table in her livingroom. She must have gathered the props for her still life from around the house. Love the 70s decor and outfit!

  My mother also found some photos from Ohio that are much older. These are ones from her ancestor garden—from her Grandma Hahn, a farm wife in Darke county, Ohio where Annie Oakley was from. She influenced my Grandma Vi and my mother. Grandma Hahn, I learned, loved her garden. She had it fenced to keep the chickens out. There are some lilacs and some irises.

Sigh. Please, people, if you garden, take some pictures of yourself in it. Someday so relative of yours may want to see it. Or if you have some photos of a favorite spot in your garden, pass them to someone in your family who values gardening—even if they don’t garden now but you suspect they will one day.

Now, what photos of me do I have in my garden?

One:  from the day before I gave birth to my second daughter. It was Easter. I am enormous and wearing a giant pink pregnancy top that is out of fashion. I can’t find it and that is making me upset.

Two: a creepy one of me in a bathrobe, hiding behind the flowers at my old house. I look sort of elfin. I think I’m making that weird face because I don’t want my photo taken.

Okay. To do list: Have photo taken of me in front of Austin roses.

Thank you.

Stay tuned: now that I have a few photos, the Ancestor Garden story will be coming shortly.

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Tucson Botanical Garden: Butterflies and Barrio Gardens

12 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by ninagarden in Botanical Garden, butterfly garden, butterly, drought-tolerant, garden, gardening, Tucson, Uncategorized

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Tags

butterfly, butterly garden, Tucson, Tucson botanical garden

I love visiting other gardens and getting ideas. Last week I went to the Tucson Botanical Gardens and the butterfly green house. It was amazing. The greenhouse was full of plants that grow in San Diego such as hibiscus and Pentas lanceolata, which was beautiful. I might try to plant it. I see it grows as a perennial here and as an annual other locales.

I had some little garden helpers with me on the tour. The butterflies were attracted to them.

We really enjoyed the butterfly house, but there was so much more to see. So many of the plants both inside the 80 degree green house and outside the butterfly house, can grow in San Diego. That’s what so amazing about the climate here. We can grow almost anything.

But here is a shady fountain that they have planted and turned into a flowerbed. I think that’s Dusty Miller, which, I am surprised to learn, is a type of Artemisia. I don’t usually like Dusty Miller, but I love my Artemisia Powis Castle. I am not so great at growing it, but I love its smell and its silver gray color. I love all the funny names it has too like Wormwood. I read that is has been grown since “the time of ancient Greece.” (Sunset Western Garden book.) Now that I read this, I see I need to prune it in the fall. Maybe that’s my problem. Anyway, here it is in Tucson:

I also loved the Barrio Garden with its roses, fig trees, purple heart (the deep purple houseplant-type that grew profusely in the flowerbeds in the house I grew up in), pomegranates, and tombstone roses. Just beautiful!

I love the look of this garden path (see below), which is lush and full, despite the heat. This pictures shows a pomegranate, a mesquite and some other flowers in the wildflower garden area. If you are ever in Tucson, be sure to visit this wonderful place!

Of course, March is a wonderful time to visit Tucson.  Everything is blooming–the Palo Verde trees are full of yellow blossoms. They float down the street reminding me of buttered popcorn. My great-grandma tried her whole life to paint one that satisfied her with its perfection. The vibrant yellow flowers against the sage green branches made a very compelling subject. Since I don’t paint, I write, and I can write about her trying to paint, but mainly I prefer to watch them because they are full of pollen and make me sneeze! (If I find a picture, I will post it.)

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