Desert Botanic Garden

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.

Charles Jones
American Motivational Speaker, Author

My sister, Paula, was taking part in a horse clinic today with a group of other horse enthusiasts wanting to become better riders, and we went to watch. I left the photography to my brother in law, Jonathan, after about 5 minutes of trying to get a nice photo. He is a professional photographer and I was getting too hot in the sun. It was very interesting watching the instructor and then the students try to emulate what he was teaching. Basic rules, be clear in your instructions to the horse, reward when it does it right, be gentle and calm. Not bad rules to live by really. Be clear about what you want, reward yourself when you get it right, be gentle and calm. Patience is a big help as well.


The Thursday before last we went with Dottie to the Desert Botanic Gardens. That was a real treat. Dottie volunteers there every Thursday so she went off to do her thing and we headed for the Monarch butterfly exhibit. Gorgeous butterflies posing all over the enclosure. Got to practice with my new camera. After 15 minutes or so I was exhausted and we decided to go back to the entrance and hire an electric scooter for me to get around on. On the way back we ran into Dottie who was demonstrating birds nests and talking about the deserts of western USA. It was very interesting. Fortunately I was able to sit down while she talked and demonstrated, unfortunately the gastritis was starting to play up. I took some percocet and we went and got the scooter.

The rest of the time at the garden was very pleasant with some opioid relief and hooning around on the electric scooter. A bit of a come down from the 650cc motorbike I used to own but just right for the day. Seriously though the gardens were really lovely. The variety of size, shape, colour and texture of the cacti was amazing. There was also an open butterfly garden, full of flowers and a few butterflies. There were also some historical replicas of American Indian huts and other items.

We had missed an exhibition by an artist who makes glass sculptures which was apparently amazing. There were two of his sculptures at the entrance. I thought at first they were light green plants but they were glass and very striking.

We met Paula for lunch as her work is very close to the gardens. We sat out on a lovely little terrace overlooking some of the gardens. At the table next to us were three dutch women discussing death and dying in some detail. Very interesting lunch time conversation.

Our trip to Greer deserves a separate entry.

Surviving and thriving.

Linda