We are living in stressful times and getting out of the house, if only to your back yard, is always a good idea. Native flora and fauna can cure the blues. I, of course, wanted to ramble on about a few other plants we saw during the excursion described, but luckily for you I ran out of time. The Berberis wilcoxii under the lichen covered rock outcropping used to be 4 to 5 feet tall in thickets, so it was fun to find the small thicket starting up under some Emory oaks (Quercus emoryi). And we are certainly going to go back and visit those Salix irrorata in that old filled lake…. those and a dozen other plants….next time. 
The photos are mine and taken on the day described. Those are male (staminate) flowers on the willow stem. And I love the little barberry thicket up against the oak trunk.
It took a visiting niece to get Petey back out into the Sonoran desert and remind him that the desert is beautiful.
Bush Muhly is the species Muhlenbergia porteri. There are over 40 species of muhlys found in Arizona and across the southwest. It would be...
Petey finds a young abandoned peccary under a mesquite tree and looks up just in time to see a large group of peccaries disappearing...
