Autumn above the desert--just a forty-minute-drive...and TURKEYS!

Even after living here for six years now, it still amazes me that I can leave work in this desert city, drive just forty minutes up into the Santa Catalina mountains, and then step out of my car, at 8000', into a mixed conifer/deciduous forest--the equivalent of going from Mexico to Canada in just 30 miles...

So, this past Friday, after work, I decided to take advantage of this ecological nearness--time for a walk in the autumn woods:

At milepost 22 on the Catalina Highway, turn off on the dirt road.

"Bear Wallow" may be a small valley, but it's just spectacular for fall color;

you truly feel you're 'elsewhere'--New England? North Carolina? Korea? Colorado?

The saguaros and prickly pear seem a world away...

The October issue of Arizona Highways magazine has 
ruffled a few feathers with its cover:

Note the "Why It's Better Here Than It Is In Vermont"

...huh?

Some provocative fun...

The flaming-foliage here might not be as widespread as in New England, but the terrain is so varied, and while most tourists come here for the Grand Canyon and desert vistas, if you want to be a deciduous leaf-peeper, you can be.

Further up, on the flanks of Mt. Lemmon, the range's highest peak (9157'/2791m), you can take the Mint Springs Trail, which meanders through some of the worst damage from the 2003 forest fire that ravaged this part of the Santa Catalinas...but the forest is recovering--young aspens are re-colonizing the slopes:

And it's on this trail that I saw these guys:

...the first wild turkeys I've seen in the Santa Catalinas!

There must've been around a dozen of them, calmly feeding and rambling through the golden aspens... I've seen them in Madera Canyon in the Santa Ritas south of the city, and a week-and-a-half ago my wife and I saw some in Ramsey Canyon down in the Huachuca Mountains...and now, on Mt. Lemmon.

A bit more subtle, under the young aspens, the fading colors of bracken fern--edible when they first appear in the spring, known as "go-sa-ri" in Korean and 'fiddleheads' in English.

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Down at the base of the mountains, the creekbeds are running dry as the summer monsoon leftovers are dwindling to just a few pools in the desert...waiting for the winter rains, just over a month away:

In lower Sabino Canyon, I've been running by the "lake"--a seasonal pool formed by a rock dam built in the 1930's--morning and evening reflections:

And down in that lower canyon, the sacred datura blossoms continue to put on a spectacular show--it's been a good year for them:

...and for some other wildflowers as well:

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With my iPhone, I've been playing with some 'painterly' photo-effects recently;

just a couple of scenes--

one from downtown Tucson:

While downtown Tucson's cluster of highrises is definitely 'modest,' 

this blue-mosaic-tiled building has always caught my eye...

...and from a couple of weeks ago,

in the red rock country up in Sedona:

fusion frittata, unexpected orchards and tastes, and fall makes its first appearance in the canyon...

It's inevitable: around the beginning of every school-year, I come down with whatever the students are sick with--some kind of cold or flu...this year it waited until mid-September, so here I am, at home, malade, enfermo, krank...

So, time to post some recent minutiae after the last entry--the shameless vote-requests from two and a half weeks ago. Alas, S. and I are not going to be finalists in that travel-photo-contest this year. One less thing to worry about...But thanks for your support!

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So, our recent fusion-food experiment... 

My wife wasn't convinced this would work, at first...She was reluctant to try a Korean-Italian frittata.

I had some left-over "yahng-nyum kahn-jahng" sauce: 

...and I had seasoned some spinach with it, and I thought that the spicy spinach would be a good addition to a frittata...So I squeezed the excess liquid out of the spinach, and we added it to the potato-onion-mushroom mixture that we sautéed and then poured the eggs over.

Voilà.

S. ended up being convinced, and a good dinner was had by all. 

Not a radical concept--adding spinach to a frittata--but the Korean spice added a nice little kick. Just make sure that you squeeze out most of the soy-sauce liquid from the seasoned spinach.

(By the way, the link to the 'yahng-nyum kahn-jahng' recipe above--not my favorite, but it's a start...I've played with it and it's more like the 'kitchen sink' version on that website--minus the vinegar. And I usually use honey instead of sugar.)

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And now, for something surreal,

a streetscape that I see on my way to work everyday:

Doesn't this scene just cry out for a story? I mean, why is the giraffe behind bars? What is he saying? Why is the buffalo leaving? And why does he have a shell? Oh, he's a teenage mutant ninja buffalo...

(here's what one friend came up with:
     "Life should be lived in the playpen of the street of dreams." Hmm...or, 'nightmares?')

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Two weekends ago, after living here for six years, S. and I finally made it out to Apple Annie's, about a 1hr40 minute drive from Tucson:

(here's the write-up I did for afar.com)

Our refrigerator drawer is now full of newspaper-wrapped "shinko" 

(more commonly spelled "shingo") pears...

And it might seem morbid, 

but I found the apples on the ground 

to have their own textural 'beauty'--

after the summer, the wind, and the rain...

...an apple memento mori

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The other night, we met up with some friends for Korean food; ahh, check out that bubbling bowl of red:

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...and from one of my favorite local bakeries:

Gotta love the pun on the socks.

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And with eating, there's running.
Our car accident is far enough in the past now, so, with the chiropractor's o.k., I've been trying some gentle runs...

...so Saturday morning (before I came down with whatever flu this is), I went to Sabino Canyon. Parts of the lower canyon are covered with sacred datura blooms...and I caught this bee coming in for a landing:

I just never get tired of these desert flowers...

...and although the thermometer might not yet know it, the canyon is just beginning to look like fall--something about the angle of light and the certain shade of green that the cottonwoods take on...