Desert Botanic Garden

With a Cub win already highlighting my day, and having already seen the statue imported from Chicago, I was determined to collect some powerful sunset photos on the Sonoran Desert. My research led me to the Desert Botanic Garden in Phoenix, an outdoor museum of cactus and other desert plants. Taking no chances on missing the colors of the sunset, I arrived there nearly two hours before sunset.
Here are three of the thousands of cactus I saw. I will not have to specify which one was not live but a sculpture in glass. Those familiar with the phenomenal art of Dale Chihuly had already realized whose work graces the main entrance of the garden.

A poem about the long wonderful day:

RACING THE SUN WESTWARD

On an icy winter day I packed up two decades of old baseball cards
Found a store that likes to make deals and sold the cards for a goodly sum.
Not willing to use that income for anything less than memorable,
On a chill spring morn I drive to the airport before dawn for Arizona.
Our plane races the sun westward, landing thirty-eight minutes early.
Later the same day I find myself eating a hot dog and keeping score
At a baseball game under more than eighty degrees of summerlike sun.
Life can be such a wonderful connection of adventures:
Tonight I will find my way to Desert Botanic Garden, an outdoor
Museum of Cactus, to photograph the sun setting into the Sonoran Desert,
Settling for the night between a Saguaro plant and a stony mountain.