EMPS: Yet Another Reid Park Ramble

In assigning her Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #36: A Walk In The Park, I expect Carly knew of the imminent danger she was in - namely, the the park through which I walked would be Reid Park, and that the dogs would be at my side. I seem to have done quite a few entries about the place already. But there's a reason for that: aside from the fact that every day I take Cayenne and Pepper to the dog park there, Miko's Corner Playground, the fact is that there is a lot of Reid Park to be enjoyed and photographed. I may be overstating the case a bit, but Reid Park is sort of the Central Park of Tucson, literally and figuratively.

From the Picasa album Yet Another Reid Park Ramble

So I took the dogs to Reid Park about 5 PM Monday, which is a little earlier than we've been going recently. The timing was intended to avoid both the heat of the day and the failing light of sunset, and also to allow me to get to the Tucson Toros box office before closing time. More on the Toros and other driving destinations at Reid Park another day. For this entry, let's stick to the areas we covered on foot yesterday, and narrow down the 71 photos i just uploaded after spending most of the night and morning editing them. That's out of nearly 90 photos actually taken!

The first shot above is on the driveway between the dog park and the rose garden. Off on the left, you can see part of the ramada where the Worship in the Park meeting was held that I posted other the weekend. The rather cute building on the right is an outhouse. The dirt area in the middle is a shallow arroyo, or wash, a place where water flows when there is a flash flood.

This is the same arroyo in the other direction.

Next to the rose garden is a stand of old, gnarled trees that I just love. The dogs seem to like them too, mostly because of the gophers and birds in evidence there. You can also see here that the time of day I chose for my shoot was problematic. The long late-afternoon shadows caused the parts of the scene not in shadow to be rather lightstruck in contrast.

I didn't realize what kind of trees these actually are until I tried to look them up online last night. They're olive trees, probably the same specific kind of olive trees as the ones that line the walk in front of St. Michael's.

A pair of well-fed mourning doves hangs out on a beam outside the rose garden.

Pepper in the rose garden. The dogs' interest was mostly in the many birds flitting and foraging among the plants. I have to say that as extraordinary as the garden is, with over 1,000 varieties, mostly developed on site, it's far from pristine. I always see bugs and faded or damaged blooms.

The rose garden as seen from the gazebo.

The duck walk.

More tomorrow.

Karen