Jutta and I visited the Desert Botanical Garden today in Phoenix, Arizona. At only 9:00 a.m., the temperature was already over 90, and the Garden was not overwhelmed with visitors. The Garden was far more beautiful than I imagined for this time of year. Many cacti are in bloom right now, including an incredibly large flower blooming on the Echinopsis Cactus.

The photo above, though, is from the Barrel Cactus, whose bloom had this fierce-looking monster of a bug staring me down before it leaped 20 feet or more and attacked my mother-in-law with savage brutality, leaving her wrinkled and a bit stooped over.

Through the carnage, my mother-in-law still enjoyed the dangers the Botanical Garden had to offer; tomorrow, I’ll post information regarding her near-fatal encounter with “THORNS”!

Attention: all of the photos in this post were updated in 2023, while only the image with a bug was in the original post. The text above this is the original that was written back in 2005 while this part of the post is part of the 2023 update.

I’ve added the extra images to better represent the day.

And other than that, have nothing else to add to the memories of that day.